The growing interest in mutual funds in Ghana has been tremendous over the last decade as evidenced by the continuous increases in number and total funds under management. However, no empirical work has been done on the selectivity and timing ability of the mutual fund managers. Using monthly returns data hand-collected from the reports of the mutual fund managers for the period January 2007-December 2012, this paper examines the market timing and selectivity ability of mutual fund managers in Ghana using the classic Treynor-Mazuy (1966) model and Henriksson- Merton (1981) model. The results suggest that, in general mutual fund managers in Ghana are not able to effectively select stocks and also are not able to predict both the magnitude and direction of future market returns. More specifically, all of the sample mutual fund managers attain significant negative selectivity coefficients and also most of them attain insignificant negative timing coefficients.

The boom of Internet usage and the significant funding dynamism in electronic banking have attracted the attention of researchers towards Internet banking. In the past, the traditional focus of Internet banking research has been on technological development, but it is now switching to user-focused research. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine determinants of user acceptance of internet banking. The proposed study uses Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique to measure the relationships between different factors in a case study of Iranian firm. The results indicate that trust is the most important factor for development of internet banking.

In this study, we provide six complementary models of data envelopment analysis to analyze the financial efficiency of chosen decision-making units for firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange. For this purpose, we consider tapered modeling, the concept of accounting costs and economic costs and divide the whole process into the two sub-processes in modeling. After the modeling process, we choose the seventeen companies and thereby, provide a new method for analyzing the financial efficiency. The proposed method seems to be more appropriate than the methods proposed in the past and it can deliver better understanding of real-world cases. Finally, we understand that how this method works for analyzing the financial efficiency of organizations.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of different factors influencing empowering employees in banking industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale, which contains three components of individual, job related and organizational related factors. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.88, which is well above the minimum acceptable level of 0.7. Using stepwise regression analysis, the study has detected a positive and meaningful relationship between employee performance and three individual, job related and organizational issues. In addition, the implementation of Freedman test indicates that organizational based factors were number one priority on employee performance followed by job related factors and individual factors.

This paper studies the relationship between transcendental leadership and organizational citizenship behavior by investigating the role of spirituality in the workplace as a mediator. The study is executed for a case study of an Iranian insurance firm located in city of Tehran, Iran. The survey uses three questionnaires for transcendental leadership, spirituality in the workplace and organizational citizenship behavior. The results indicate that there were some meaningful relationships between the components of transcendental leadership and organizational citizenship behavior and element of spirituality in the workplace and organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, the study indicates that there were positive and meaningful relationships between vision/hope/faith and spiritual traditions, between components of transcendental and spiritual rituals, between oriented leadership and ultimately transcendent and spiritual components of oriented leadership. However, the study does not find any relationship between the two components of love, friendship and leaders’ spiritual growth and its subordinates and variable of oriented tradition of spirituality.

The purpose of this paper is to determine and prioritize factors influencing on brand equity in consumer’s point of view for a case study of Samsung appliance consumers in city of Tehran, Iran. The study investigates the effects of four factors in terms of the customer & apos; s perspective, price, advertisement, family and brand image, by dimensions of brand equity, perceived quality, brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, on brand equity. The research method is based on a descriptive-survey research. The questionnaire includes Samsung consumers in city of Tehran, Iran. To test the hypotheses, SPSS and LISREL software packages are used. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and inferential statistical tests including structural equation modeling and path analysis are used. The results of the survey have indicated that family and brand image influence positively on brand equity but the effects of advertisement and price on brand equity were not confirmed.

Flight interruption is one of the most important issues in today’s airline industry. Every year, most airlines spend significant amount of money to compensate flight delays. Therefore, it is important to detect important factors influencing on flight delays. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors on this issue. The study also asks some decision makers to make pairwise comparison and ranks various factors using the art of analytical hierarchy process. The study determines that technical defects and delayed entry were among the most important factors to blame for flight delays. In addition, announcing the postponement, replacement aircraft and path replacement are among the most important decisions facing managers in the aviation industry during the disruption of the flight.

This paper studies the effect of the ratios of P/E and PEG on stock returns of the firms accepted on Tehran Stock Exchange. The study uses regression and Pearson Correlation Coefficient based on the performance of 138 firms over the period 2004- 2009 according to the Iranian calendar to investigate the effects of P/E and PEG on stock returns. The study also uses the models originally proposed by Chahin and Choudhry (2010) [Chahin, S., & Choudhry, T. (2010). Price to earnings, growth radio and value growth based strategies. Social Science Research Network, 19(4).] to discuss the strategies of investing on stocks. The results show that the ratio of P/E had more effect on stock returns than the ratio of PEG and stocks returns had a direct relationship with P/E and an inverse relationship with PEG. In addition, the returns of growth stock were more than value stock.

Auditor independence is associated with the independence of the internal/external auditor from various parties who may have some financial interest in the business being audited. Many countries have set up different rules forcing firms to change their auditors every few years. This helps business retain healthy business. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of change in auditing system on 90 selected firms from Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2007-2011. Using a regression model developed earlier by Demerjian et al. (2012a) [Demerjian, P. R., Lev, B., Lewis, M. F., & McVay, S. E. (2012a). Managerial ability and earnings quality. The Accounting Review, 88(2), 463-498.], the study determines a positive impact of change in auditor system on business development.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is one of the needed concepts in competitive edge. IMC is defined as a cross functional process for creating and nourishing profitable relationships with customers and other stakeholders by strategically controlling or impacting all messages sent to these groups. It ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. This study investigates the effectiveness of marketing communication in an Iranian automaker named Khodro using IMC system. The study tries to audit the rate of marketing relationship integrity and its outcome on organization performance. The study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 384 randomly selected people who use this firm’s services and Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.974. Hypotheses of this survey are exanimated by Pearson correlation test as well as pairwise t-student tests. The results show the effects of integrated marketing Communication on organization performance. In addition, there is a significant positive correlation relationship between integrated marketing communication with mission marketing, Cross functional Strategic Planning and Interactivity. Finally, there is a significant positive correlation relationship between dimensions of IMC.