One of the primary concerns on many countries is to determine different important factors affecting economic growth. In this paper, we study some factors such as unemployment rate, inflation ratio, population growth, average annual income, etc to cluster different countries. The proposed model of this paper uses analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to prioritize the criteria and then uses a K-mean technique to cluster 59 countries based on the ranked criteria into four groups. The first group includes countries with high standards such as Germany and Japan. In the second cluster, there are some developing countries with relatively good economic growth such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. The third cluster belongs to countries with faster rates of growth compared with the countries located in the second group such as China, India and Mexico. Finally, the fourth cluster includes countries with relatively very low rates of growth such as Jordan, Mali, Niger, etc.

Aviation fuel of aircrafts is one of the most important and predominant expenditures in air companies. The recent jump on petroleum price has increased the price of equipments and maintenance. Therefore, many aircraft companies look for different ways to reduce their expenditures as much as they can. In this article, we study effective factors to reduce the fuel consumption. The proposed study of this paper gathers different criteria, which are important for cost reduction plans based on experts & apos; point of view. We take advantages of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of criteria and experts & apos; ideas using fuzzy decision making. Finally, a list of effective factors to reduce the fuel consumption is presented based on order of their importance.

Tectonic geomorphology can be explained as the study of landforms produced by tectonic processes, or the application of geomorphic principles to the suggestion of tectonic problems. Tigrani & apos; s watershed is located in north part of hillside. Nayband Fault sub branch pass from the east of zone and kuhbanan fault from the north of zone supplies an appropriate theme for survey tectonic activities. For access to this aim geomorphic indexes contain Stream Length Gradient, Drainage Basin Shape Ratio, Ratio of Valley-floor with to Valley Height, Topographic Symmetry, Mountain Front Sinuosity and Asymmetry Factor with use of topographic maps, DEM, Arc GIS and Global mapper softwares have gained. The results of research which calculated with Iat index show west sub basin have medium tectonic activity (Iat=2), and east sub basin have high tectonic activity(Iat=1.5). Overall the results show that assessment of tectonic activities in Tigrani watershed this basin is active because of tectonic movements.

Stress plays an important role on job satisfaction in many industries such as accounting. We present an empirical study to examine the impact of job stress on the relationship between the locus of control and accountants & apos; job satisfaction. The study selects a sample of 65 senior and regular accountants who work for thirteen different regional municipalities of city of Mashad located in east part of Iran. The study uses different well-known questionnaire methods such as stress diagnostic survey, locus of control, job satisfaction and employees & apos; performance to perform the study. The results indicate that the stress is on average level for the dominant locos of control factors and job satisfaction and employee performance are in relatively high level. The study also reveals that there are four important factors of role of ambiguity, quantitative overload, career development and handling other workers & apos; responsibilities play important role on job satisfaction and managing career development has important impact on the performance of accountants.

One of the primary issues on many developing countries is educational failure associated with schoolchildren or university students. Many students cannot continue their educations for different reasons such as lack of family support either financially or emotionally. In this paper, we study the effects of family background characteristics on educational participation in one of Iranian cities. We select 40 students who have the history of educational failure and distribute some questionnaire among them. Our survey is mainly based on relationship between family characteristics such as age, educational level, etc. The results indicate that different family characteristics could highly influence educational failure. Some of the most important factors that all students agreed on are family dispute, lack of interest and support on behalf of their parents, disregarding students & apos; creativity, university professors with weak performance and high living expenses as well as high tuitions. There are other issues, which could impact educational failure such as having a university with good discipline and studying in overcrowded classes.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of service quality on the overall customer satisfaction in telecommunication industry of Pakistan. Survey questionnaires are used to collect the data from the postpaid users of different telecommunication service providers. Stepwise regression analysis is used to examine the research hypothesis. The results show that service quality has positive association with the overall customer satisfaction. This study is a unique approach, which describes the factors affecting customer’s satisfaction. The findings of this research provide insights for the managers to develop and maintain the customer’s desired service quality. Implications for marketing strategists and researchers are presented.

The study of culture, gender and leadership behavior has received much interest from researchers during the last three decades. This paper attempts to propose a conceptual framework consisting three human resource management (HRM) practices (culture, gender and leadership styles) and to explain the relationship among these variables. Culture plays an important role to adopt different leadership styles because it influences the way in which individuals, groups and teams interact with each other and cooperate to achieve organizational goals. The seven cultural elements are measured in the current study i.e., i) member identity ii) rewards criteria iii) team emphasis iv) means-end orientation v) control vi) unit integration and vii) risk/ conflict tolerance. Results show that the culture has a significant influence on male leaders to adopt different leadership styles, but female leaders likely participative in their leadership positions and try to adopt democratic leadership in different cultures.

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has emerged as a proactive approach for improving environmental performance of processes and products in accordance with the requirements of environmental regulations. The aim of this paper is to determine and model the drivers of GSCM to put environmental activities into practice. Thirty-four measurement items are developed on the basis of opinions from industrial experts and the literature and the necessary data are collected. To validate the measurement scales for GSCM, we perform a factor analysis. The results show that a six-factor measurement model (including internal environmental management, green purchasing, cleaner production, recovery, eco-design and pollution) fits the data acceptably. All of the measurement items significantly loaded on the constructs on which they were hypothesized to load. These results gave us confidence that the measures are indeed valid and reliable.

Cost benefit analysis (CBA) is a useful tool for investment decision-making from economic point of view. When the decision involves conflicting goals, the multi-attribute analysis approach is more capable; because there are some social and environmental criteria that cannot be valued or monetized by cost benefit analysis. The complex nature of decision-making in road safety normally makes it difficult to reach a single alternative solution that can satisfy all decision-making problems. Generally, the application of multi-attribute analysis in road sector is promising; however, the applications are in preliminary stage. Some multi-attribute analysis techniques, such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) have been widely used in practice. This paper presents an integrated framework with CBA and AHP methods to select proper alternative in road safety projects. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a case study of improving a road to reduce the accidents in Iran. The framework is used as an aid to cost benefit tool in road safety projects.

In recent decades, provision-chain management has been one of the major concepts. The main reason that attracts attention to the concept is the increase in competition and struggle for the survival. There are different ways to increase the competition in organizations such as increasing productivity by acquiring information technology.
In this paper, we present an integrated model with the balanced score card framework for supplier selection strategy. The proposed model of this paper gathers 161 important factors suggested in the literature and selects the six most important ones using different multi criteria techniques. We also propose a goal programming techniques with some hard constraints and implement the mathematical model for real-world case study of auto industry. The proposed model is solved in four different forms using TOPSIS, VIKOR and the combination of these 2 factors with factor analysis. The preliminary results indicate that a combination of VIKOR and factor analysis presented better results with 9% reduction in costs, 38% increase of quality, and 3.2% increase in acceptability.