Despite the significance of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithm to market segmentation, there is a need of a comprehensive literature review and a classification system for it towards identification of future trend of market segmentation research. The present work is the first identifiable academic literature review of the application of neural network based techniques to segmentation. Our study has provided an academic database of literature between the periods of 2000–2010 and proposed a classification scheme for the articles. One thousands (1000) articles have been identified, and around 100 relevant selected articles have been subsequently reviewed and classified based on the major focus of each paper. Findings of this study indicated that the research area of ANN based applications are receiving most research attention and self organizing map based applications are second in position to be used in segmentation. The commonly used models for market segmentation are data mining, intelligent system etc. Our analysis furnishes a roadmap to guide future research and aid knowledge accretion and establishment pertaining to the application of ANN based techniques in market segmentation. Thus the present work will significantly contribute to both the industry and academic research in business and marketing as a sustainable valuable knowledge source of market segmentation with the future trend of ANN application in segmentation.

The idea of this paper is to determine the mental models of actors in the firm with respect to the stakeholder approach of corporate governance. The use of the cognitive map to view these diagrams to show the ways of thinking and conceptualization of the stakeholder approach. The paper takes a corporate governance perspective, discusses stakeholder model. It takes also a cognitive mapping technique.

One of the main challenges in Stock Market is to choose an appropriate combinations of various assets. The aim of this study is to propose a hybrid method, which is able to survey one problem with some criteria that it is very good for investment problem. In this study, we use a hybrid multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, which shows the dependent relationships among criteria with DEMATEL method to build a relations-structure among criteria. We then use Analytical Network Process (ANP) to determine the relative weights of each criterion with dependence and feedback, and the VIKOR method is implemented to rank and select the best alternatives for investment. This study is in stock exchange in Iran to select the best stocks and the data are gathered through the years (2006-2010). There are a lot of methods to rank and select of firms that most of the methods just do one, ranking or selecting; but the used method in this study not only ranks the firms but also determines which firms (stocks) are best for investment, so that in this study 2 of 50 firms are proposed for investment.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been recognized as one of the most popular techniques to describe static and dynamic aspects of software systems. One of the primary issues in designing software packages is the existence of uncertainty associated with such models. Fuzzy-UML to describe software architecture has both static and dynamic perspective, simultaneously. The evaluation of software architecture design phase initiates always help us find some additional requirements, which helps reduce cost of design. In this paper, we use a fuzzy data model to describe the static aspects of software architecture and the fuzzy sequence diagram to illustrate the dynamic aspects of software architecture. We also transform these diagrams into Petri Nets and evaluate reliability of the architecture. The web-based hotel reservation system for further explanation has been studied.

Organizations with activities of all kinds are influenced by environmental conditions, and external environment is in fact the beginning point of the strategy. Strategic management is an approach resulting from fast changing age and can consider it as a view and a technique for flexible planning to fast changes, and balanced score card is regarded as one of the strong instruments in this zone. Balanced score card can truly plays an important role in all stages of strategic management and the efficiency of this model is considerably regarded in management performance evaluation in different organizations. However, strong instrument such as balance score card is hardly used because of long term dominance of political approaches in the management of Iran media organizations. This paper conceptualizes administrational trend of strategic planning by implementing balanced score card and we draw strategy map and determine performance indexes in a written media organization (Hamshahri Newspaper).

Information technology plays an important role in increasing organizational cooperation both inside an organization and among different firms. In fact, may organizations have shared information though the recent advances of information technology and they have been able to increase the performance of their organizations, significantly. In this paper, we present an empirical study to investigate the relationship between e-business and intra and extra organizational cooperation. The results indicate that e-business directly increase intra organizational performance, indirectly increase organizational cooperation. Extra organizational performance directly increase organization performance, inside cooperation also indirectly influence inside cooperation through extra organization cooperation.

Today, countries compete to gain political, economic, social and cultural advantages. In addition, cities are trying to demonstrate their predominance on local and regional levels and achieve development by using managerial science. Meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions tourism (MICE) hosting as a significant element of urban tourism is one of the effective methods to obtain urban development around the world. However, no specialized planning and independent investments in regard to these activities have been organized in Iran. Aiming to identify suitable areas in the northern part of Iran, the present research intends to recognize the necessary physical and location related (P.L) indexes to perform the specialized activities of MICE tourism in this region. So at first, indispensable indicators to accept special role of MICE tourism are identified and then using GIS and fuzzy method, adapted areas are assigned. The result map shows that a ribbon-like area near the Caspian Sea with two wide lands at central and western parts is a proper choice to host MICE activities in the region from the viewpoint of P.L indexes.

There is no doubt that traditional accounting does not provide actual value of assets since they only measure tangible assets. Intellectual capital provides a new concept for measuring actual value of the assets and we can calculate future values of the firm. In this paper, we first calculate intellectual capital based on the ratio of market value/book value for three years period. Then we investigate the relationship between intellectual capital and growth rate of intellectual capital as well as financial performance of some publicly traded petrochemical and pharmaceutical firms. The results of our survey indicate that there is a positive relationship between intellectual capital and equity growth with EVA and return of assets. However, there is no meaningful relationship between intellectual assets with net earnings.

This paper tackles the single machine scheduling problem with dependent setup time and precedence constraints. The primary objective of this paper is minimization of total weighted tardiness. Since the complexity of the resulted problem is NP-hard we use metaheuristics method to solve the resulted model. The proposed model of this paper uses genetic algorithm to solve the problem in reasonable amount of time. Because of high sensitivity of GA to its initial values of parameters, a Taguchi approach is presented to calibrate its parameters. Computational experiments validate the effectiveness and capability of proposed method.

Uncertainty plays an important role on many engineering problems and there is a growing interest in having reliable solutions especially for problems with sensitive parameters. The paper presents a robust optimization (RO) model for multi-objective operation of capacitated P-hub location problems (MCpHLP) under uncertainty set. There are, at least, two parameters in any P-hub problems, which are under uncertainty. The first one is associated with demand and the second one is the amount of time required to process commodities. We present a scenario based robust optimization technique, where these two items are considered under various scenario and a RO is implemented to find reliable solutions. The implementation of the proposed RO model is demonstrated for an example using weighting method.