This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of internet in insurance industry in Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire, distributes it among some experts and analyzes them based on some statistical test. The survey is conducted within insurance firms located in one of provinces of Iran. The results of the study confirm that internet influences competition among providers, bargaining power of customers as well as suppliers, significantly. In addition, internet has meaningful impacts on starting a business, the threat of substitutes, customer satisfaction, perceived image as well as perceived quality. The results of this survey emphasizes on the relative importance of internet for building a better competitive insurance industry.

Automatic teller machine (ATM) is one of the most popular banking facilities to do daily financial transactions. People use ATM services to pay bills, transfer funds and withdraw cash. Therefore, we can treat ATM as a tradition inventory problem and use simulation technique to analysis the amount of cash required on different occasions such as regular days, holidays, etc. The proposed model of this paper uses genetic algorithm to determine the replenishment cash strategy for each ATM. The survey uses all transactions accomplished during the fiscal years of 2011-2012 on one of Iranian banks named Ayande. The study categorizes various ATM based on the average daily transactions into three groups of low, medium and high levels. The preliminary results of our survey indicate that it is possible to do setup different strategies to manage cash in various banks, optimally.

The aim of this study is to examine mediation effect of social skills between impulsivity with substance abuse in adolescents. The research sample consists of 616 students of vulnerable high schools in Ardabil City. Together the data of Impulsivity Scale, Matson social skills scale and substance abuse survey were used [Matson, J. L., Rotatori, A. F., & Helsel, W. J. (1983). Development of a rating scale to measure social skills in children: The Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY). Behaviour Research and therapy, 21(4), 335-340.]. The results show that impulsivity indirectly is associated with substance abuse students (P & LT; 0.001) through the effect on social skills. The results indicate that high levels of impulsivity and low-level social skills increase substance abuse in students. These results are consistent with other existing results found in the literature.

This paper presents a study to investigate the relationship between organizational culture and communication apprehension among some employees who worked for Iran broadcasting channel. The study has adopted two well-known questionnaires developed by Hofstede (1984) [Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture & apos; s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills CA: SAGE Publications. ISBN 0-8039-1444-X] for organizational culture and McCroskey et al. (1985) [McCroskey, J. C., Beatty, M. J., Kearney, P., & Plax, T. G. (1985). The content validity of the PRCA?24 as a measure of communication apprehension across communication contexts. Communication Quarterly, 33(3), 165-173.] for communication apprehension (CA). We have used Chi-Square test to verify different hypotheses of the survey and the results of the survey have indicated that while there was no relationship between CA and three components including cultures of masculinity, individualistic culture and ambiguity aversion, there was a significance relationship between CA and power distance. The results of our survey indicate that as the power distance increases we may expect a higher level on CA.

This paper presents a comparative study of using a linear probability and Logit models to predict credit risk of the customers in some branches of Bank Mellat in Tehran, Iran. The statistical population of this research includes the applicants of the facilities granted by Bank Mellat in Tehran during the year 2008. Each branches of Bank Mellat of Tehran has been considered as a cluster, where a sample has been taken using simple random method. The sample size consists of 176 companies, 109 legal entities are classified as those ones good at settling their accounts, and 67 as those ones tardy in settling their accounts. The financial ratios of these companies have been calculated based on their audited financial statements and by descriptive and analytical methods of two statistical models. The results show that liquidity ratios are not significant factors for the prediction of credit risks and these two models are not significantly different from each other in this term. Moreover, the accuracy values of credit risk prediction of linear and Logit models are 73.7 percent and 80.3 percent, respectively. Therefore, Logit model is more consistent with reality and more appropriate for such a prediction.

Brand loyalty plays essential role on product development especially in mobile industry. In this paper, we present an empirical survey to study the effects of different factors including brand associate, brand awareness, distribution intensity and quality perception on brand loyalty. The proposed model of this paper is examined by designing a questionnaire consists of 16 questions in Likert scale and distributing it among 200 people who use a particular brand in mobile industry called Nokia. The results are analyzed using structural equation modeling where Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.84. The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between perception quality as well as brand awareness and brand loyalty. In addition, there is a positive relationship between brand awareness and perception quality.

In this research, we use Hofstede method and Noble’s framework in strategy execution to evaluate the effect of organization culture on the successful implementation of strategies in a case study of Payam-e-Noor University of Iran. Data Collection is performed with the standard Hofstede survey, an evaluation tool for organization culture, and researchers’ survey tool to evaluate the effective implementation of strategies. The reliability coefficient was calculated as 0.846 using the Cronbach alpha. The target population includes 600 senior managers of Payam-e-Noor university of Iran at the time of data collection Cochran formula was used to calculate the required sample number of 120 individuals. The results show that according to the Hofstede dimensions, the dominant cultural aspects of high power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, and femininity were identified. The first two have a direct influence on effectiveness of strategies. While individualism is known to have an invert effect on effectiveness of strategies, no connection was identified between masculinity and effectiveness of strategies, and thus, this theory was not confirmed in this research.