During the past few years, there have been increasing competitions in insurance firms around the world and most insurance firms try to find appropriate methods to reduce the cost of their products. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing cost management in insurance industry. The proposed study of this paper detects five items including human productivity, economic inflation, competitions within industry, information technology and rate of damage paid to customers, which are effective on four important cost components. The implementation of analytical hierarchy process on ranking four cost components indicate that the amount of damage paid to customers is the most important factor followed by administration expenses, commission and advertisement.

This paper presents an investigation to assess the relationship between female employees’ organizational citizenship behavior and job satisfaction within organization. A questionnaire is designed and distributed among employees who work in city of Qom, Iran and after analyzing the responses by SPSS software program, the relationships between variables are assessed by Pearson test after confirming the normality of the data using Kolmogrov-Smirnov test. The results of the studies reflect a strong relationship between citizen-organization behavior of female employees and job satisfaction. In addition, the survey examines six sub-hypotheses and confirms that there are positive and meaningful relationships between female employees’ custom, altruism, work consciousness, mutual coordination, fairness and courtesy on one side and job satisfaction on the other side.

This study proposes an integrated model that combines the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and two categories of variables, personal and marketing, to investigate the attitudinal and behavioral decision factors to purchase green products. The model derived and tested via structural equation modeling on a sample of 374 consumers from the Guilan province in Iran. The results show that attitude is explained by consumers’ environmental concern, quality of green products, green advertising and green labeling. The results of the structural equation analysis indicate that attitude positively influences intention to purchase green products. Green purchasing intention also influences on green purchasing behavior. This paper also discusses the implications of the results for marketers and researchers.

The main objective of this study is to develop and to test a comprehensive model that investigates the effect of shopping environment on consumption emotion, perceived value and behavioral intentions in tourism setting. The proposed model specifies the effect of environment perceptions on consumption emotions (pleasure and arousal), hedonic and utilitarian value, which in turn emotions and values affect tourist’s satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Data were collected through tourists who visited a tourist city by using cluster random sampling method. A total of 410 questionnaires were used for data analysis. Structural equations modeling (SEM) by using LISREL was performed to empirically test the relationships between the constructs of this research. Results show that environment has a positive and significant influence on pleasure and arousal. However, the effect of environment perceptions on behavioral intentions was not significant. In addition, results indicate that pleasure and arousal have positive and significant effects on tourist’s values. Findings also indicate that hedonic and utilitarian values had direct effect on customer satisfaction and the effect of satisfaction on behavioral intention was positive and significant. Finally, it suggests that service providers should focus on components of environment in a way that contributes positively in creating positive emotions in customers, which in turn consumption emotions enhance perceived value and positive behavioral intentions.

In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the performance of a salt refinery named Seif cooperative mining. The study uses Political–Economical-Social– Technological Analysis (PEST) technique to evaluate opportunities and threats associated with external as well as internal factors influencing the firm. The study designs a questionnaire in Liket scale and asks decision maker to evaluate internal/external threats. In terms of external factors, there are four opportunities and ten threats associated with External factor evaluation (EFE) factors. In terms of opportunities, existing potential for export has received the highest priority followed by easy access to national transportation and government support. On the threats part, firm’s dependency on importing necessary parts, global price reduction and mineral reserve termination in near future are the most important issues. In addition, in terms of internal factors, on the opportunity part, access to necessary utilities is considered as the most important factor followed by availability of high level lab equipment and sufficient assets and equities. On the threats, depreciation is considered as the most important issue followed by lack of optimum utilization of equipment and lack of enterprise resource planning. In addition, the study uses balanced score card (BSC) technique to look at the performance of the firm in terms of learning and growth, internal process, customer and financials. The study determines the present and ideal status of the firm.

Decision Support Systems (DSSs) are computer-based information systems for providing necessary supports for business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs often serve the management, operations, and planning levels of all organizations and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily achieved in advance. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing DSSs. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 36 questions, distributes it among 213 employees who work for different offices in municipality of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.872. In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.782 and 1014.521, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived three factors including system, analysis and transaction.

Housing is one of the most important sections of development in a country and its economic importance has put it in the center of attention. It can cause rise and depression of habitation by its extended economic aspects. Mehr Housing plan is a state run housing project in most cities started 2007 in Iran to protect and provide cheap housing for poor people and young couples. Mehr housing project by its large scale and wide dimensions can affect the society’s economy. Therefore, to investigate weaknesses and strengths of this project in terms of economic and applying necessary reformation can increase the success probability of this project. For this purpose, this study assess the weaknesses and strengths of Mehr housing of province of Khorram Abad in Iran for achieving economic goals and also presents solutions to better access to these goals. Time scope of the present study is 6 months of 2011 and the second 3 months of 2012. The methodology is applicable in terms of goal and is descriptive survey in terms of nature. In this study, a combined method of interviewing to experts and distributing a questionnaire among the applicants of Mehr housing has been used for data collecting. Among strengths of Khorram Abad in economic section, employment and urban landfill pattern reformation can be implied. In addition, among weaknesses of this project are lack of proper first design and technical justification of the project and use of only 2 shabby fabrics.

Social marketing plays essential role on accessing better market share. It normally costs less than other marketing techniques and provides better way for market exposure. In this paper, we present an empirical study to detect important factors influencing social marketing in one of well-known providers of university entrance pre-test. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 16 questions, distributes it among some students who use this kind of services. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.926. In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.882 and 2219.3, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived two factors including marketing drivers and feasibility study.

This study focuses on the importance of growth models, growth strategies, role of knowledge management system in the formulation of effective strategy for the enterprises following growth. Choice of an appropriate growth strategy is at the heart of any successful entrepreneurial venture. Selection of a strategy may be effective for one entrepreneur while it is not for other. Choice of Growth Strategy depends on various different factors, organisational context and environment which may vary from enterprise to enterprise. Resource based view is very important consideration for the entrepreneurs on the path of growth. Evaluation of all kind of resources helps them to grow their enterprises successfully. Selection of an appropriate growth strategy allows the entrepreneurs in overcoming growth challenges and avoiding the growth reversals and setbacks.

In this paper, we study the impact of leadership style among middle level managers of Iran Khodro, the biggest Iranian automaker, to promote innovation among regular workers. The proposed study designed a questionnaire and distributed it among middle level managers of this auto-maker. The study uses t-student test to examine the relationship between leadership behavior components and innovation and Freedman test is employed to rank the effects. The results of t-student values indicate that all leadership behavior of middle level have positive influence on innovation and Freedman test implied that stimulating knowledge diffusion was number one priority followed by intellectual stimulation and innovative role-modeling. We have also performed multi-regression analysis and the results have indicated that there were some positive relationship between leadership components and innovation.