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.

Soft drink beverages are important part of many people’s foods and many prefer soft drink to water when they have dinner. Therefore, this business model can be considered as the longest lasting sector for many years and there has been not much change in these products. However, new methods of advertisement play important role for increasing market share. In this paper, we study the impact of new methods of advertisement in product development. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire for one of Iranian soft drink producers, which consisted of 274 questions in Likert scale and uses factor analysis (FA) to analyze the results. The study selects 250 people who live in city of Tehran, Iran and Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.88, which is well above the minimum desirable limit. According to our results, there were six important factors impacting in product development, including modern advertisement techniques, emotional impact, strategy of market leadership, pricing strategy, product life chain and supply entity. The most important factor loading in these six components include impact of social values, persuading unaware and uninformed customers, ability to monopolizing in production, improving pricing techniques, product life cycle and negative impact of high advertisement.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of training on quality of life based on Glasser’s training program on parents with mentally retarded children. In our study, samples were divided into two groups of experiment, control and pretest were executed for two groups, and then Glaser’s method was performed in six consecutive 150 minutes long sessions and, finally, both groups were investigated, statistically. The population of this survey includes mothers of mentally retarded children and the study has been performed in city of Esfahan, Iran. We selected a group of 60 mothers and divided them into two equal groups of 30 people. World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire contained 26 questions where 24 questions measure physical and psychological health, social relationships and environment health consisted of 7, 6, 3 and 8 questions, respectively. The results of the survey indicate that Glaser’s training program could significantly improve quality of life in our study.