One of the primary concerns in banking industry is to measure the relative importance of banking industry using popular multi criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques such as data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In this paper, we use these two MCDM techniques to measure the relative efficiencies of 16 private and governmental banks in terms of electronic payment. There are three inputs with DEA methods including the number of issued cards, the number of ATM machines and the number of POSs and there are two outputs including the number of successful ATMs and the number of successful POSs transactions. The proposed study of this paper uses the necessary data of one of Iranian provinces and the results of the implementation of DEA and TOPSIS have indicated that 9 out of 16 banks were efficient. Our study also indicates that mean of relative efficiency for private banks was 82% while this number was 75% for governmental banks.

This paper investigates the relationship between different granting loans and bank deposits in some governmental banks in province of Semnan, Iran. For the proposed study of this paper, equipment of resources includes cash account, zero-interest account, short term investment and long term investment and these are considered as dependent variables. There are also seven types of granting loans devoted to customers, which are partnership loans, zero-interest loans, civic participation, contract quantity loans, future contract loans, rent-purchase loans and installment sales loans. The study considers the financial information of 171 governmental banks located in province of Semnan, Iran over the period 2006-2011. The results of our study indicate that five variables maintain positive impact on dependent variable. The highest impact belongs to Partnership loans (0.34), followed by Sales loans (0.24), contract quantity loans (0.21) and Zero-interest loans (0.16) and Future contract loans (0.14) come in the last position. The study also uses Freedman test to rank dependent factors and the results indicate that short- term investment is number one priority followed by long term investment and the other two options including zero-interest and cash accounts are in lower priority.

This paper investigates the relationship between job involvement and organizational commitment among lower-level employees in Iranian automaker industry. In this study, job involvement is an independent variable, organizational commitment is dependent variable, and the analysis is performed using 100 randomly selected data through a questionnaire, which consists of four-parts. The study gathers biographical and occupational data using a self-designed 40-item questionnaire. The survey measures job involvement using Kanungo’s 10-item 5-point rating scale and organizational commitment is measured based on Mowday’s 15-item 5-point scale. The study uses different statistical techniques including Pearson Product Moment Correlation Technique and Multiple Regression Analysis. The results indicate that job involvement is strongly associated with organizational commitment. The paper therefore suggests that managers must put in all their efforts to promote job involvement in their companies.

During the past few years, Iranian auto industries sell their products directly to customers and the increase competition among domestic auto makers has increased motivation to pay especial attention to their customers. This paper investigates relationship between marketing and customer’s loyalty. The study designs a questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part is associated with customer information, the second part considers relationship marketing factors and the third part measures components of customer’s loyalty. Cronbach alpha in relationship marketing, loyalty and overall alpha were measured 0.878, 0.891 and 0.712, respectively. Obtained data were analyzed using LISREL software. Ranking the components of the internal and external latent variable are discussed by using the Friedman test and our investigation indicates that some components are not meaningful when the level of significance is five percent. Based on the results of Freedman test, common sense is the most important factor with relative weight of 4.08, followed by relationship (4.01), trust (3.90), commitment(3.86), trouble shooting (2.88) and for the variable of loyalty, quality(3.89), reputation(3.57), decoration(3.4), responsibility(2.96), clients seeking variety (1.75) have the highest average respectively. Note that the results of Friedman test are consistent with the results of structural equation modeling. Chi-Square values have been calculated as 597.701 and 108.917 for marketing relationship and loyalty, respectively.

A good portfolio optimization on banks’ currency holdings not only helps meet their needs but also it increases banks’ total assets. During the past few months, US sanctions against Iran has influenced profitability banking currency portfolio holding. The proposed model of this paper considers the weekly information of two years before and after sanctions occurred in Iranian banking system. Therefore, the study uses 210 weekly data and proposes a method to analyze the data to measure the performance of banking currency portfolio after sanction happens. The proposed model of this paper provides lost profit and unrealized loss and using the idea of Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) we rank the resulted data. Next, we use some parametric and non-parametric methods to see whether there is any change as a result of sanction on the performance of the portfolio. The results indicate that not only the performance of the portfolio was reduced but also the variance of the return after sanction has been increased.

Suicide attempt has been one of serious social problems in todays’ modern society and many studies have been focused to detect different factors influencing this unfortunate issue. In this paper, we perform an empirical study among 897 people who had some experiences associated with suicide attempt. We have designed and distributed a questionnaire among them investigating the impact of four major issues including marital status, educational background, age and living status. The results of our survey indicate that married people tend to commit suicide more than single people do. The other observation indicates that more educated people are more likely to commit suicide, older people are more interested in ending their lives and finally, people who live in cities are more likely to commit suicide than other people.

One of the most important tools for improving the relative efficiencies of any organization is to establish suggestion system. Having a reliable system, which could reflect all employees’ comments and concerns, helps managers take necessary actions to remove any possible obstacle in the system. In this paper, we measure efficiency and effectiveness of suggestion system in the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution. We also provide practical suggestions for improvement and necessary actions required to review the system. The proposed study of this paper uses a sample of 297 people from 1294 employees who work in different position for some of the regional offices of this firm in north part of Iran. The study has used two separate questionnaires, where the first one consists of 40 questions in Likert scale trying to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the suggestion system. In addition, we use another questionnaire to rank important factors detected in the first stage. The results of questionnaires have been analyzed using different statistical tests.

Banking sector has been one of the fastest growing sectors in Iran due to changes in regulations in private banks. In this paper, we perform a survey on the effect of structure of financing on banking performance. The main question of this survey is whether there is any relationship between different methods of financing private banks in terms of their performances. The survey investigates relationship between changes in debt ratio with return of assets, between changes in time dependent investments and return of assets, between changes in long-term investments and return of assets. Finally, we study whether there is a relationship between changes in ratio of total equities to total assets on return of assets. The proposed study of this paper considers three private banks whose shares have been traded on Tehran Stock Exchange namely Eghtesad Novin, Parsian and Saman. The information has been collected over the period 2006-2010. The results of this study indicates that there are some positive and meaningful relationships between changes in time dependent investments, changes in long-term investments ratio of total equities to total assets with return of assets. However, the study did not find any meaningful relationship between changes in total equities to total assets and return of assets.

Unified modeling language is a semi-formal and standard language for describing software architecture easily used to meet requirement functionality and to describe behavioral and structural specifications in software engineering. However, since UML is not a formal model, direct evaluation of software architecture is not possible, directly. On the other hand, evaluating software architecture in initial phases helps us consider more requirements and it reduces designing expenditures. Therefore, converting pragmatic model to formal model is necessary for software architecture evaluation. For evaluating software architecture and making an executive model, using color Petri net are useful because of simplicity, high capability and enhancing theoretical mathematics. Using language variables and fuzzy logic causes a higher accuracy in computations associated with efficiency evaluation. In this paper, we present fuzzy logic and reaction analysis before implementation, which can improve efficiency of design problems.

Dividend yield plays an important role for decision-making in the stock market. Stock returns alone are informational content used by investors in financial analysis and forecasting. The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the effect of different types of notes and conditions on the performance audit report on the Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2005-2011 for 65 selected firms. We have used statistical tests to examine the effects of disagreement, restriction and ambiguity issued by auditors. The results show that there is no relationship between stock returns and audit reports provided and capital market does not respond to the audit report. This could be due to unfamiliarity with the terminology of the users of the audit report to be audited.