One of the primary concerns on performance measurement is to know how much a particular project cost. However, using traditional method on project-based products often leads to inappropriate results. In this paper, we re-examine this issue by comparing the cost of a power station construction project using ABC versus traditional method. The results of survey show that ABC method is capable of providing better estimates for overhead costs compared with traditional method. In other words, ABC method helps reduce some of the unnecessary overhead cost items and increase on some other cost components. This helps increase the relative efficiency of the system by reducing total cost of project.

During the past two decades, there has been a growing trend on knowledge-based organizations. Innovation, on the other hand, plays essential role on building competitive business units. In this paper, we present an exploratory study to identify critical factors of innovation culture in organizations. We detect important factors influencing innovation culture in construction industry based on the implementation of factor analysis. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 400 experts who are involved in construction industry. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.779, which validates the overall questionnaire. The results of factor analysis have indicated that six factors of building cultural infrastructures, education, organizational vision, established culture, strategic culture and flexible culture are the most important items influencing innovation culture.

During the past few years, many organizations try to provide some of their services through their websites. This would help them provide fast and reliable services to various people around the world. In this paper, we present an empirical survey to measure the relative performance of a university website in Iran using Parasuraman & apos; s technological readiness index. The proposed study uses a standard questionnaire and distributes it among 387 active website users and the results are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The proposed study of this paper considers the effects of four factors including efficiency, accessibility, achievement and security on customer loyalty via two variables of trust and satisfaction. The results demonstrate that three components of trust, efficiency and achievement play essential role on customer loyalty.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to find out important factors influencing future research, training and employment in Iranian scientific environment. The proposed model of this paper prepares a questionnaire consists of various questions and distributes it among some experts and analyze them using DEMATEL model. The model divides the 7 factors into two groups of cause and effect. On the cause side, there are four factors including preventing future unemployment crises, detecting future skills, finding future profitable/unprofitable job opportunities and prevention on having open position with no volunteer to work. On the effect factors, there are three factors influencing the future research including detecting the present risk associated with jobs, detecting necessary standards for future works and creating a balance between demand and supply.

Increasing intensity of competition among organizations in current century has caused everlasting search for ways to gain competitive advantage and win the competition. In this regard, organizational learning certainly counts as a competitive advantage to gain for today’s managers. This study aims to discuss the mediating role of organizational learning in the relationship between market orientation and organizational performance. The study population includes all of the employees in the Central Office of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. As 170 samples were randomly stratified and selected, information obtained was analyzed using SPSS software ver.20. While results support the significance of organizational learning’s mediating role in the relationship between intelligence generation and intelligence dissemination with organizational performance, this role was declared insignificant in the relationship between responsiveness and organizational performance.

Leadership is one of the most important components of management in any business unit. An organization with good leadership tends to have a better chance to survive in todays’ competitive environment. This paper considers the effects of leadership style on innovation in one of the biggest automakers in Iran named Iran Khodro. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among a sample of 278 regular employees and 61 middle level managers of this firm. The results of the survey indicate that there is a meaningful difference between leadership style and standard leadership style among middle level managers when the level of significance is five percent. In addition, there is a meaningful difference between innovation and its components with standards among regular employees. Finally, leadership has positive and meaningful impact on employees’ innovation.

During the past century, there were different events where herding behavior created market turbulence and many investors were hurt, significantly. In this paper, we perform a survey to investigate investors’ behavior on creating herding behavior when they face with various levels of uncertainty on available information on the market. The survey designs a questionnaire, distributes it among some investors, and analyzes the results. The findings of our survey indicate that when there is a high level of uncertainty on publicly disclosed information, most investors assign more weights on confidential information or make no decision. In the event the uncertainty is on moderate level, investors rely more on publicly announced news and follow others’ behaviors. Finally, when the level of uncertainty is low, most investors depend on public information but this uncertainty creates less herding behavior compared with the previous case. The study also indicates that those investors who are normally making their decision with high inertia are not influenced by herding behavior.

This paper presents a study to investigate the relationship between creativity and idealistic realistic attitude among high school teachers in city of Gorgan, Iran over the years 2010-2011. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 262 randomly selected teachers. Cronbach alphas have been calculated as 0.88 and 0.876 for creativity and idealistic, respectively. The results of the survey indicate that there was a significant correlation between teachers & apos; creativity and their realistic and idealistic approach. The study also finds out that teachers & apos; with realistic & idealistic approach are more creative than those who are not. In our survey, idealist teachers are more creative than realist teachers are and there is a significant relationship between teachers’ gender and their realistic and idealistic approach.

We present a study to investigate the impacts of four factors on contribution role on society among Arab tribes Jarghoyeh women who live in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire, distributes them among 400 women, and analyzes their feedbacks. There are four hypotheses, which study the effects of various factors on women’s contribution role on society. These factors include educational background, level of welfare, numbers of children and ties of kinship. The results show that while educational background, level of welfare and ties of kinship play important role on women’s contribution role on society, having more children do not statistically have any influence on juvenile delinquency.

This paper presents a social work study on relationship between thinking style and self-esteem as well as socio-economic conditions among university students. The study selects 512 students from Islamic Azad University of Najafabad in province of Esfahan, Iran and distributes a questionnaire, which measures creativity and self-esteem. We also collect students’ socio-economic conditions and analyze the information. The results of our survey disclose that thinking style and self-esteem have overlap with each other. In addition, students with better socio-economic conditions are more creative and use complex style of thinking. The study also provides some guidelines for practically implementing the results of our survey among other students.