This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors influencing on getting competitive advantage on two construction firms, namely Keyson and Sazeh consultants in Iran. In this study, four variables of internal resources, personal characteristics of decision makers, demand conditions and market strategies/services are investigated. The study prepares a questionnaire consists of 19 questions in Likert scale and distributes it among 145 regular employees who work for these two firms. Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.93, which was well above the minimum acceptable limit. The results of the survey have confirmed that while four issues influence on the success of the firms on getting competitive advantage, there were some meaningful difference between the effects of the factors.

E-banking has been extensively developed in recent decades and most banks need to have such services in their daily activities. Therefore, it is necessary that banks do a better management on banks’ liquidity risks. Electronic banking and the expansion of its scale from POSs and ATMs to telephone banking, mobile banking and internet banking have increased banking transactions, significantly. The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the relationship between the development of e-banking and liquidity management using liquidity ratios. The focus of this investigation has been on the amounts of transaction of ATM machines, POSs and PIN PADs as the most important means of electronic banking. In this respect, the data obtained from 14 private and public bank representatives of banking system over the period 2007-2012 are considered. Our survey indicates that the characteristics of electronic banking significantly influence on liquidity.

Entrepreneurship is one of the main pivot of progress and growth of every country. The spread of entrepreneurship particularly the role of women in this category has speeded up today more than any other times. Many of researchers believe that attention to women entrepreneurship plays remarkable role in soundness and safety of nation’s economy. Maybe in Iran less attention has been paid to this matter in proportion to other countries and due to various reasons, there are not many entrepreneur woman. However, employing typical entrepreneur women in various fields of productivity, industrial, commercial, social and cultural and even higher than these, in country’s political issue proves that women’s role is magnificent and in many cases they enjoy higher abilities in portion to men. In this paper, using additive ratio assessment (ARAS) as a prioritizing method, eleven entrepreneur women were chosen for prioritizing criteria for measuring a typical women’s entrepreneurship characteristics. The results show that the balance between work and family among criteria are propounded as the highest weight and fulfilling different jobs simultaneously as the lowest weight.

This paper presents a study to investigate the effects of big five personal traits on emotional intelligence on some Iranian firms located in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one, which is originally developed by McCare and Costa (1992) [McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1992). Discriminant validity of NEO-PI-R facet scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 52, 229-237.] for measuring personality traits and the other, which is used for measuring emotional intelligence . The first questionnaire consists of five personal categories including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability versus neuroticism, and openness. Using structural equation modeling and stepwise regression model, the study has detected a positive and meaningful relationship between four components namely, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness as well as openness and emotional intelligence.
In addition, the study detects a negative and meaningful relationship between neuroticism and emotional intelligence.

This paper presents a study to determine demand for electricity in city of Yazd, Iran over the period of 1998-2008. Using vector error correction model (VECM) based on seasonal information, the study determines that electricity has no elasticity in short term in household expenditure. Therefore, government policy on increasing price of electricity will not influence demand. However, electricity maintains elasticity over the long-term period and an increase on price of electricity could motivate consumers to reduce their consumption by purchasing energy efficient facilities. Therefore, any governmental strategy to increase price may have positive impact on economy. The study also detects a positive and meaningful relationship between temperature and electricity consumption.

One of the most important issues in urban planning programs is to allocate necessary spaces for educational applications. Selecting appropriate locations for training centers increases students & apos; mental capabilities. Suitable location for the establishment of educational facilities is the first fundamental step for development of educational systems. The selection of optimal sites for educational facilities involves numerous parameters and it is essential to use multiple criteria decision making approaches to make wise decisions. This paper presents an empirical investigation on facility layout planning for educational systems in city of Birjand, Iran. Using fuzzy GIS as well as analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the study determines the most appropriate candidates for training centers.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors influencing on selection of petrochemical market. The survey has accomplished among 97 randomly selected experts in petrochemical industry in Iran. The survey designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some experts and using binomial test; it has confirmed that except one factor, cultural affairs, other issues including political, cultural, regulations, economic, infrastructure, market potential, buyers’ potentials and buyer’s positions influence on market development. The implementation of Freedman test has indicated that Buyers’ positions are number one priority followed by buyers’ potentials, rules and regulations.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to see whether or not there is any relationship between profit conservatism and investment sensitivity and efficiency of investments in listed companies of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Using regression analysis, the study investigates whether there is any relationship between conservatism and sensitivity of investments, between profit conservatism and efficiency of company’s investments and between conservatism ability to create profit and cash in accepted TSE firms. The study chooses a sample of 102 firms from TSE market over the period 2005-2011 and the results confirmed that there were positive and meaningful relationship between all variables of the survey (? = 5%).

Markowitz theorem is one of the most popular techniques for asset management. The method has been widely used to solve many applications, successfully. In this paper, we present a multi objective Markowitz model to determine asset allocation by considering cardinality constraints. The resulted model is an NP-Hard problem and the proposed study uses two metaheuristics, namely genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to find efficient solutions. The proposed study has been applied on some data collected from Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2009-2011. The study considers four objectives including cash return, 12-month return, 36-month return and Lower Partial Moment (LPM). The results indicate that there was no statistical difference between the implementation of PSO and GA methods.

This paper examined the effects of cognitive emotion regulation on employees’ job satisfaction. In this survey, Questionnaire and the questions were divided into two categories of cognitive emotion regulation and job satisfaction. To measure cognitive emotion regulation, including unadjusted emotion regulation strategies and adjusted strategies, 36 items questionnaire was used originally developed by Garnefski et al. (2001) [Garnefski, N., Kraaij, V., & Spinhoven, P. (2001). Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation, and emotional problems. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 1311–1327.]. The questionnaires were distributed among 340 staff employee of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration. The results revealed that the adjusted cognitive emotion regulation strategies increase job satisfaction of employees. However, unadjusted cognitive emotion regulation strategies reduce employees & apos; job satisfaction. Moreover, among adjusted emotion regulation strategies, put in perspective strategy did not have significant effect on job satisfaction and rumination, had no significant effect on job satisfaction, which was one of the unadjusted strategies of cognitive emotion regulation.