Free trade zones are important regions for development of business activities and detecting important factors for development of these regions plays essential role for development of economy. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine the factors influencing the performance of the incentive polities of free trade zones in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 34 questions. Cronbach alpha is equal to 0.809, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. In addition, Bartlett & apos; s Test of Sphericity yields a Chi-Square value of 2392.31 with Sig. = 0.000. Using principal component analysis with rotation, the study has detected six important factors influencing on development of free trade zones including government support, financial capability, development strategy, product competition, infrastructure and consultation services.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to construct, to validate and to determine normalization factors associated with adolescents depression scale. The study is performed among 750 randomly selected guided and high school students, 364 male and 386 female, who live in city of Zanjan, Iran. Validity of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Validity of Simpson-Angus Scale (SAS) and divergence validity of the Coopersmith self- esteem coefficients are 0.72, 0.37 and -0.71, respectively. Result suggests that adolescents’ depression test is a reliable and valid tool for assessing depression, with utility in both research and clinical settings, counseling centers. In addition, the results of correlation test indicate there are some meaningful differences between depression levels of female and male students. In fact, our survey indicates that female students have more depression than male students do (F-value = 33.06, Sig. = 0.000). In addition, there are some meaningful differences between depression levels in various educational levels (F-value = 8.59, Sig. = 0.000). However, the study does not find sufficient evidence to believe there is any meaningful correlation between educational backgrounds and gender.

The designers often face the problem of choosing the best fitted material for a specific application from a huge array of available alternatives while simultaneously fulfilling all the given design requirements. For dealing with the material selection problems, a systematic and efficient approach is thus necessary. Selection of an optimal material from among various alternatives based on different conflicting subjective as well as objective attributes can be defined as a typical multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. The material selection problems for diverse engineering applications have already been solved by the past researchers employing different MCDM approaches. In this paper, the feasibility of Q-analysis technique as an MCDM tool is explored for arriving at the most appropriate decision regarding materials selection. Its applicability is demonstrated with the help of four illustrative examples and its capability to provide almost accurate material selection decisions is also validated.

The selection of optimum machining parameters plays a significant role to ensure quality of product, to reduce the manufacturing cost and to increase productivity in computer controlled manufacturing process. For many years, multi-objective optimization of turning based on inherent complexity of process is a competitive engineering issue. This study investigates multi-response optimization of turning process for an optimal parametric combination to yield the minimum power consumption, surface roughness and frequency of tool vibration using a combination of a Grey relational analysis (GRA). Confirmation test is conducted for the optimal machining parameters to validate the test result. Various turning parameters, such as spindle speed, feed and depth of cut are considered. Experiments are designed and conducted based on full factorial design of experiment.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing earning adjustment on firms selected on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2006-2011. There are four independent variables associated with the proposed study of this paper including Proportion of shares owned by institutional investors, Return on assets, Profit change and Market value to book value. In addition, Investment restructuring is considered as control variable. The results of the implementation of regression analysis indicate that there was a reverse relationship between earning forecasted adjustment and two independent variables including size of firm as well as the ratio of market value to book value. However, Net profit has a direct and positive relationship with earning forecast adjustment.

In today' s extremely competitive environment, customers are the most important asset of any business and success of any organization depends on loyal customer retention. Therefore, it is important to learn more about different groups of customers and propose appropriate plans to take care of them. Customer segmentation is one of the most common methods to analyze customer’s behavior. The market can be divided into several smaller homogeneous groups, which helps organizations deliver targeted marketing techniques and provides optimized techniques for resource allocation. This paper uses the information gathered from Point of Sales (POS) in one of Iranian private banks and using two methods of K-Means and Kohonen, customers are clustered into four segments to detect the most profitable customers.

Over the past number of years, competence management has become a key issue for companies. Similarly, to the importance of knowledge management, competence management considers an individual’s performance, based on his or her knowledge. Thus, knowledge management becomes an important aspect for companies to manage resources, through the ability of characterizing key competences and evaluating how they are improved through past experiences and roles, thus selecting project team members according to the respective existing skills. This paper focuses on the coordination of design activities in order to propose a tool dedicated to operation-level project managers to help prepare their technical teams based on the required skills. The goal is to enhance the effectiveness of the teams, as well as their performance in the short-term, as well as the long-term, while coordinating with the human resources department. This work is based on the results of the Aides et assisTances pour la conception, la conduite et leur coupLage par les connAissanceS – Help and support for design, coordination and their coupling by knowledge (ATLAS, 2008 - 2011). This project studies the coupling between systems design and management. We propose an initial tool to manage skills in a design project.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of five factors on purchasing food product including brand and reputation, being green product producer, quality of packaging, taste of food products and materials used in products. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 20 questions, distributes 440 questionnaires among some consumers who were regular customers of food chains in west part of city of Tehran, Iran and managed to collect 225 properly filled ones. The study uses binomial test to verify five hypothesis of the survey and it has confirmed the effects of four variables including brand and reputation, quality of packaging, taste of food products and materials used in products. In our survey, there are some positive and meaningful correlations among different pairs of five variables of the survey where the highest correlation is between materials used in products and quality of packaging (r=0.606, Sig. = 0.000) and between Quality of packaging and being green product producer (r=0.545, Sig. =0.000).

This research paper examines the role of cloud computing in promoting sustainable development. Cloud Computing (CC) has emerged as a transformative technology that has the potential to reduce the environmental impact of businesses and organizations, while also enabling economic growth and social development. The paper explores the environmental benefits of cloud computing, including energy efficiency, reduced carbon emissions, and the potential for renewable energy integration. It also examines the economic and social benefits of cloud computing, including cost savings, increased productivity, and improved access to technology. The paper concludes by highlighting the potential challenges and opportunities associated with the adoption of cloud computing for sustainable development and identifies key areas for future research and policy action. Overall, the paper argues that cloud computing has the potential to play a critical role in promoting sustainable development, and that further research and policy action are needed to realize its full potential.

Due to the emergent government regulations and stronger public awareness about environment today organizations simply cannot discard environmental concern if these companies want to stay alive in the international market. Environmental management is becoming more and more important for companies for sustainable development. If the industries of developing countries have to export to developed nations they have to match up with developed countries’ environmental standards. The emphasis on the environmental protection is not only due to organizational stakeholders but also governments, customers, employees, competitors and communities. Environmental issues in manufacturing sectors are not investigated appropriately in developing countries. The objectives of this paper are to review the literature on drivers and barriers for the implementation of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM). After providing a background on GSCM, categories and review the literature on various issues/ factors for the recent GSCM, the concluding remarks for this review is also presented.