Measuring the relative efficiency of banking industry has been a popular subject among both practitioners and academicians. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been widely applied for different purposes. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of various banks located in province of Semnan, Iran. The proposed study uses DEA method to rank all units and using Anderson and Peterson method (1993) [Andersen, P., & Petersen, N. C. (1993). A procedure for ranking efficient units in data envelopment analysis. Management Science, 39, 1261-1264], we provide some super efficiency for inefficient units. The study also provides reference numbers for inefficient units and gives some target values for all inefficient units.

During the past few years, Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) has been changed into one of the most popular places to invest and index has been quadrupled in fewer than three years. As a result, many people have been attracted to invest on TSE market. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of investors’ personal characteristics including financial management skills, wealth and financial intelligence on investors’ risk tolerance among 384 randomly chosen investors who were active on TSE market in city of Esfahan, Iran. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined that financial management skills, wealth and financial intelligence influence positively on investors’ risk tolerance.

This paper studies the impacts of different factors influencing on perceived organization change in municipality organization in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of five factors including partnership, communication, training, believe in change and organization commitment and the other for organizational change in Likert scale. The study has been implemented among 147 regular employees of municipality organization in city of Tehran, Iran. Using simple regression analysis, the study has detected that all mentioned factors influence organizational change, positively. In addition, Freedman test indicates that partnership maintains the highest impact followed by believe in change, communication, organizational commitment and training.

This paper studies the impacts of four components of organizational culture on brand promise in one of Iranian producer of detergent and sanitary products. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of organizational culture and the other for brand promise in Likert scale. Cronbach alphas for organizational culture and brand promise are calculated as 0.83 and 0.91, respectively. The study has been implemented among 211 regular customers of producer of detergent and sanitary products. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression analysis, the study has detected that three components of organizational culture including tribal culture, entrepreneurial culture, and market culture influence positively on brand promise and bureaucratic culture influences negatively on brand promise.

This paper studies the relationship between dividend changes and future profitability of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. Using the information of 191 companies, the study has implemented some regression techniques. The results of the research model analysis indicate that the changes in dividend contain significant and important information content, for the future profitability and dividend changes, and have an important and positive impact on the future profitability of the company. The results also show that changes in dividend can improve the company & apos; s future performances and messages to recovery the activities and future performance of the company. However, the results have shown the greatest impact on the performance of the dividend changes, for a year after considered year and not for two years after. In other words, the information content of dividend changes are more about the performance of the next year and the information provided is lower in the next two years.

The increase in the number of universities for the last decade in Iran increases the need for higher education institutions to manage their enrollment, more effectively. The purpose of this study is to design a model to improve the first year university student adjustment by examining the effects of academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, satisfaction, high school GPA and demographic variables on student’s adjustment to university. The study selects a sample of 357 students out of 4585 bachelor first year student who were enrolled in different programs. Three questionnaires were used for collection of data for this study, namely academic self-efficacy, academic motivation and student satisfaction with university. Structural equation modeling was employed using AMOS version7.16 to test the adequacy of the hypothesized model. Inclusion of additional relationship in the initial model improved the goodness indices considerably. The results suggest that academic self-efficacy were related positively to adjustment, both directly (B=0.35) and indirectly through student satisfaction (B=0.14) and academic motivation (B=0.9). The results indicate a need to develop programs that effectively promote the self-efficacy of first year student of student to increase college adjustment and consequently retention rate.

This paper examines the relationship between quality of life and mental health among regular employee who work for Esfahan Steel Company, Iran. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring quality of life, which is adopted from Goldberg and Williams (2000) [Goldberg, D., & Williams, P. (2000). General health questionnaire (GHQ). Swindon, Wiltshire, UK: NFER Nelson.]. In addition, the study uses another questionnaire, which is adopted from Juniper et al. (1994) [Juniper, E. F., Guyatt, G. H., Willan, A., & Griffith, L. E. (1994). Determining a minimal important change in a disease-specific quality of life questionnaire. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 47(1), 81-87.]. Using Pearson correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression technique, the study has determined a positive and meaningful relationship between quality of life and mental health care.

This paper examines the effect of the service brand on the customer value–loyalty process. The study includes the traditional effect of brand image plus three additional influences, which reflects the broader service perspective including company image, employee trust, and company trust. Using survey data of a sample of 385 bank customers, the analysis indicates there is a direct influence of some of the perspectives of the brand on customers & apos; perceptions of value. The results indicate that brand image, organization image, trust to firm influence positively on quality of services. In addition, brand image, organization image, quality of services and trust to firm influence on customer’s perspective where quality of services maintains the lowest impact and corporate image has the highest impact on customer’s perspective.

This paper investigates consumer involvement profile among people who intend to purchase mobile devises. The study considers the effects of various factors influencing on purchase intention including consumers’ personal characteristics such as age, gender, income as well as some external factors including advertisement. The study uses a questionnaire in Likert scale, originally developed by O’Cass (2000) [O’Cass, A. (2000). An assessment of consumers & apos; product, purchase decision, advertising and consumption involvement in fashion clothing. Journal of Economic Psychology, 21, 545-576.]. The questionnaire has been distributed among 385 people, randomly who purchased mobile devices from a mall in city of Tehran, Iran. Using Pearson correlation test, the study has concluded that oral advertisement as well as consumer purchase involvement have positive and strong relationship with consumer’s purchase intention. In terms of age, people aged 20-30 maintained the highest purchase intention. In addition, in terms of gender, men had more purchase involvement than women did.

This paper investigates the role of export competitive advantage on export performance in food industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 280 randomly selected experts in food industry and Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.827. The study has applied factor analysis to find important factors influencing export performance. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Bartlett & apos; s Test of Sphericity have been performed to validate the results and they both validated the questionnaire. The results of the survey have determined six effective groups including product development, e-commerce, marketing planning, organizational performance, competitiveness and supply chain management.