Many firms try to optimize their supply and production levels separately, but this method could limit influence profitability, negatively. Thus, it is becoming more important to analyze these two levels, simultaneously. In this paper, an integrated supply-production planning is considered, simultaneously. We develop a mathematical model, which calculates the optimal inventory lot sizing for each supplier and minimizes the total cost associated with the process of procuring raw material, transferring and holding raw materials and manufacturing. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming and heuristic genetic algorithm (GA) method is developed to solve the resulted problem. We examine the performance of the proposed model for a case study conducted in Iran. Experimental results show that such a model can reduce the costs of the case study, substantially.

Organizational structure is one of the most important components of any firm and it plays essential role on building successful business units. Organizational structure in cooperative organizations may influence productivity of such organizations, significantly. In this paper, we consider the relationship between various components including formality, complexity, concentration on performance measurement in cooperative organizations in province of Qom, Iran. The study selects 280 firms out of 1069 cooperative organizations and using Pearson correlation test examines different hypotheses. Based on the results of our survey, formality and concentration have positive impacts on the success of cooperative organizations but the impact of complexity on performance of organization is not confirmed.

During the past few years, there have been tremendous efforts on developing remote working among women in an attempt to help females take care of their family related responsibilities. In this paper, we study the impact of remote working on quality of services in central office of Tehran municipality of Iran. The proposed study designs a standard questionnaire to survey remote working and using an existing standard SERVQUAL questionnaire measure the level of quality of work because of remote working. The survey indicates that women who participated in remote working program were satisfied from this program in terms of personal, social as well as organizational productivity. Remote workers were highly satisfied from financial advantage of this program. Managers were, however, highly satisfied from the results of their female’s remote working. In our survey, remote contract workers were more satisfied than remote formal workers were. The surveyed people believed organizational structure was the most important challenge for remote working followed by economical, personal and social issues. The results of SERVQUAL also indicate there were some meaningful relationship between remote working and quality of work.

Financial statements are considered as primary sources of information for most investors to make investment decisions. A crystal clear and comprehensive annual report helps many interested parties about the performance of any business unit. However, many rules and regulations ask management teams of organizations to provide quarterly financial results. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to study the effects of quarterly financial reports on three ratios including systematic risk, return on assets and firm size. The proposed study gathers the necessary data from 72 firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2000-2006. The study determined the performances of these 72 firms before and after the releases of three quarterly reports and using Freedman test determined whether there were any meaningful differences between two groups of data or not. The results of Freedman test indicate that there were not any meaningful differences between stock performance and systematic risk before and after quarterly results. The survey also examines the relationship between systematic risk and size of firms using Pearson correlation test and the results indicate there were some meaningful differences size and systematic risk.

Internet marketing plays an important role on profitability of organizations, it can build a bridge between customers and business owners and anyone could purchase products and services through internet. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing internet marketing on Iranian food industry, named Shahrvand. The proposed study selects 280 out of 1040 managers who were involved in this industry during the year of 2012. Structural equation modeling has been performed to detect important factors including internal/external factors, ease of use and electronic marketing. Cronbach alphas have been calculated for these four items were mostly above 0.80, which validated the overall questionnaire of the survey. The results indicate that among internal factors, knowledge management, organizational culture and resources influence on acceptance of internet marketing, while these factors do not show any meaningful impact on ease of use. In addition, external factors including trend on market growth, competition and infrastructure influence on ease of use and acceptance of internet marketing but infrastructure and competition do not impact on ease of internet marketing.

Present study investigates the effect of workplace spirituality on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior by considering the role of spiritual intelligence. To measure the concepts of workplace spirituality, customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior (CO-OCB) and spiritual intelligence, the conceptualizations are applied on 282 employees of an insurance company in Tehran during the fiscal year of 2011 and the results are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that spiritual intelligence and workplace spirituality have positive impact on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior. However, when spiritual intelligence is considered as a moderating factor, spirituality development in workplace cannot alone influence on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior since including spiritual intelligence hedges the effect of workplace spirituality on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior though workplace spirituality can improve customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior through impacting on spiritual intelligence.

Managing an organization under chaos and uncertainty is often a concern of academic society. These days, we may face unpleasant natural, economical or even political incidents where mangers need to handle them, properly. This paper presents an empirical survey to investigate on an electromotor maker when it faces different chaos. The proposed study uses balanced scorecard in terms of four different perspectives including internal process, learning and growth, customer and financial performances. For each perspective, the proposed study uses analytical hierarchy process to rank different sub-criteria. Based on the results of our survey profit margin is the most important item followed by profit capability and brand name while productivity and sales force performance were the least important items.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the performance of a mining firm in province of Semnan, Iran based on balanced scorecard (BSC). The proposed study investigates the present status of the case study in terms of four BSC perspectives including internal process, learning and growth, customer and financial figures. The firm uses BSC for one year and after that, we compared the performance of the firm prior and after BSC implementation. The preliminary results indicate that the firm was able to make a 30% improvement on its performance after one-year implementation of BSC. In other words, the firm was able to make 59% improvement on learning and growth, 33% growth on internal process, 32% growth on customer and 21% improvement on financial figures.

Mohsen Dadashi, Zakaria Eskandari, Mohammad Reza Iravani, Samaneh Salimi and Hajar Jannesari PDF (194 K)
Abstract: Worry exposure (WE) is a core of cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The present study was carried out to examine the efficacy of WE in treating patients with GAD. Three patients with GAD were selected using Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) based on disorders axis I. Subjects were selected using purposeful sampling, and underwent the treatment after gaining treatment needs. Multiple baseline experimental single case study was used as the method of the present study. The treatment program was carried out for 8 weekly sessions, with a follow up period of 3 months later treatment ending. Subjects completed Pennsylvania State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (CAQ). Research findings represented that WE decreased the intensity of GAD symptoms: Pathologic worry and cognitive avoidance. WE has suitable efficacy in treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder and it maintains suitable efficacy in treating GAD.

In today's competitive business environment, consumers are exposed to make their choice from different alternatives. Customer loyalty has never been an easy task and many business owners may lose their customer as soon as new products appear on the market. This paper presents a study to find important factors influencing on sales force using factor analysis. The proposed study designed a questionnaire and distributed among 180 customers of a well-known food chain named Shahrvand in different regions in city of Tehran, Iran and managed to collect 156 filled ones. The questionnaire consists of 68 questions Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.847, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of our survey indicate that five major factors including multi-sensory brand experience, brand engagement, pleasing brand, brand communications and brand effectiveness influence brand loyalty, significantly.