Knowledge management is frequently identified as an important antecedent of innovation. However, few empirical studies have specifically addressed antecedents and consequences of effective knowledge management. Today, domestic organizations are compelled, as well as other international organizations and have to compete to stay in business environment. Hence, they must be innovative. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of knowledge management on employee's innovation in organizations through empowerment as a mediator for a case study of the Agricultural Bank of Qazvin province of Iran. Required information was gathered by a self-made questionnaire adapted and based on conceptual model adapted from previous studies. The population of this study consists of 369 employees of the Agricultural Bank of Qazvin. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed, in which 188 valid questionnaires were collected. These questionnaires were distributed randomly among the male and female employees in branches of Agricultural Bank. The questionnaire is conducted by factor analysis and the reliability is measured by Cronbach's alpha. The structural equation modeling is used for data analysis. The results reveal the fact that empowerment will lead to employee's innovation. However, other variables did not have any significant and direct or indirect effect on employee's innovation.

To date, the use of three key aspects together has received little attention in studies on sustainable business models (SBMs). These aspects are a) the qualitative design of SBMs based on a valid sustainable business model canvas presented so far, b) the dynamic quantitative analysis of the designed SBMs, and c) the identification of appropriate business policies for different future scenarios, not just for one. Therefore, in this research, an attempt is made to study all three aspects by proposing a new practical framework based on one of the latest SBMs, called value triangular business model canvas (VTBMC), and system dynamics. To evaluate the proposed framework in the real world, it was implemented as a case study in Farassan Industrial and Manufacturing Company, one of the companies producing composite pipes. The results showed that the proposed framework helps business owners and managers identify the proper policies to achieve their key business objectives in the future under critical uncertainties and also create appropriate balanced values for a wide range of stakeholders, rather than just for shareholders.

Reflecting investor expectations, most prior corporate governance research attempt to find a relationship between boards of directors’ composition and firm financial performance. Specifically, we try to examine the relationship between the boards’ size, board independence, CEO duality and gender diversity and two measurements of performance in listed companies in CAC 40, namely return on assets (ROA) and return of equities (ROE). We found evidence provide that board characteristics were positively correlated to the firm’ performance. However, our results show a significant association between ROE, ROA and the board of directors’ composition. We find significant negative association between financial information and equity-based management compensation. On the other hand, the presence of independent directors on the board seems to affect, positively, the level of financial performance of CAC 40 firms. Likewise, the stewardship theory assumption, the CEO duality is very high and is significantly associated with a higher level of firm performance. The results show that there was a significant relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance from our samples CAC 40 companies. In addition, we find significant negative impact of leverage on the financial performance for CAC 40 firms.

This paper presents a numerical analysis of free vibration of thin circular and annular plate using finite element method. The first five natural frequencies are presented for uniform annular plates of various inner-to-outer radius ratios, with nine possible combinations of free, clamped and simply supported boundary conditions at the inner and outer edges of plates. The accuracy of the method is established by comparing the results available in the literature. Results show that natural frequency parameter increases as the inner-to-outer radius ratio increases except in case of free boundary condition, for which it decreases with the inner-to-outer radius ratio. This result provides benchmark values that can be used to validate result obtained by other approximate approaches such as finite difference method, differential quadrature method and boundary element method.

Force measurement is very vital in various scientific applications and its precise measurement is very necessary for reliability of the measurement process. There are several types of simple shaped force transducers, which may range from ring shaped force transducers to cantilever type or beam type force transducers. Ring shaped force transducers are one of most commonly used type of force transducers are developed on the basis of theory of thin rings. Till today, some of the modifications of ring shaped force transducers have been reported, the present investigation discusses the development of elliptical shaped force transducer as a modification of ring shaped force transducers and its preliminary investigation on metrological characterization based on the calibration procedures according to standards ISO 376-2011. The force transducer has been developed for the nominal capacity of 20 kN and strain gauges have been applied over the optimum locations to minimize cross sensitivity. The force transducer is developed exclusively for static force measurement related applications to serve as a link in providing the traceability to the user industries and calibration laboratories or serve as force transfer standard. The force transducer has been evaluated for suitability as a precision force transducer with the help of the 50 kN Dead Weight force machine traceable to national standard of force. The elliptical shape force transducers are found to have comparable metrological characteristics as compared to other ring shape force transducers.

The rapid expansion of Dubai and the United Arab United infrastructure in the Middle East over the past twenty years has resulted in a large accumulation of concrete waste in landfills and dumping sites. The subsequent hasty increase in the construction and demolition of the infrastructure has outstripped effective waste management facilities, posing a serious natural challenge. This concrete waste greatly endangers human health, property, and biological systems when buried. To find effective solutions to this issue, different waste management methods were researched and compared to find the most effective. This paper aims to differentiate the most appropriate waste management strategies and determine their impact on the environment. These methods included reducing the waste, reusing those wastes that can be reused, recycling, and disposal in landfills and government dumping sites. This paper opens the door for future studies to determine the impact indicators and specific waste management methods that substantially influence the environment and the cost of damage. In addition, a Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCA) may be carried out to supplement this research and determine the financial benefits of the various specific waste management options and the cost of damages. The study predominantly assesses the different construction and demolition waste management strategies. It primarily adds valuable knowledge concerning these waste recycling management techniques and their environmental effect. This study also suggests directions for future exploration, such as identifying key impact indicators and management strategies that have a significant impact on the environment. Alternatively, LCA can complement the results by assessing the financial benefits of different physical waste management options. To sum up, the exponential growth of infrastructure in Dubai has led to a considerable challenge regarding concrete waste. The LCA-based comparison between landfill and recycling methods highlights the urgency of adopting sustainable waste management practices. This study not only broadens the understanding of damage cost models but also provides a comprehensive assessment of practical waste management options, contributing to informed decision-making to minimize environmental impact.

Electrical Energy is an essential commodity which significantly contributes to the economic development of any country. Many non-linear factors contribute to the final output of electrical energy demand. In order to efficiently predict electrical energy demand, many time-series analysis and multivariate techniques have been suggested. In order for these methods to accurately work, an enormous quantity of historical dataset is essential which sometimes are not available, inadequate and inaccurate. To overcome some of these challenges, this paper presents an Artificial Neural Network based method for Electrical Energy Demand Forecasting using a case study of Lagos state, Nigeria. The predicted values are compared with actual values to estimate the performance of the proposed technique.

This paper considers the economic order quantity (EOQ) model over a finite horizon, in which demand rate follows a two-parameter Weibull time-dependent, shortages are allowed and completely backlogged. Mathematical formulations are derived under two different circumstances i.e. case I: The permissible delay is less than or equal time to finish positive inventory for settling the account, and case II: The permissible delay period is greater than time to finish positive inventory for settling the account. Based on the optimal solutions some important results are derived and numerical examples are provided to validate the proposed model. Finally, sensitivity analysis is provided to analyze the effect of changes with the variation in one parameter at a time on the optimal solution.

The increased role of wind turbine systems makes it important for its operational states to be con-tinuously monitored and optimized. This goal can be achieved using existing methods, which re-lies on closed-form expressions. The use of these methods, however, becomes challenging when interacting parameters cannot be fully presented with closed form expressions. In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) based algorithm is proposed as a solution to this problem. This algorithm is used to estimate wind turbine systems operational state and reliability. The proposed method is able to provide a more holistic approach to manage a wind turbine system with respect to the problem mentioned above. Simulation results show that the developed ANN can predict the average number of failures per year, distribution of failure and average downtime per failure with good accuracy. This was achieved using an ANN model with 5-15-3 architecture. The model generates mean square errors of 4.6 × 10^-3, 4.2 ×10-3, and 4.0 × 10^-3 at the training, validation, and testing stages, respectively. The study is beneficial to wind turbine practitioners and manufacturers as its findings can provide in-depth understandings of reliability issues of the system.

Supply chain management in oil and gas industry plays an important role for the success of these companies in most countries. A reliable supply chain helps on time delivery of goods and services and leads to better performance of the firms and yields higher profitability. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of different oil distribution companies in Iran. The proposed study uses a five-stage Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) technique to measure the relative efficiencies of 40 distribution oil companies. The study designs a questionnaire based on four balanced scorecard perspectives and distributes it among various experts who were familiar with supply chain issues. The results indicate that the network performed relatively efficient since the study did not detect any unit with low performance and most of them maintained relatively high scores.