This paper investigates the effects of different marketing strategies including basic marketing, reactive marketing, accountable marketing, proactive marketing and partnership marketing on brand equity. The proposed study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of different marketing strategies and the other for brand equity in Likert scale. Cronbach alphas for brand equity and marketing strategies are calculated as 0.71 and 0.86, respectively. The study has been implemented among 385 regular customers of a Picnic Gas distributer in city of Karaj, Iran. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression analysis, the study has detected that there were positive and meaningful relationship between marketing strategies and brand equity.

Employee deviance is prevalent and could have significant consequences to organizations and/or its members. Drawing upon deterrence theory, this study examined the mediating role of self-regulatory efficacy on the relationship between punishment certainty, punishment severity and organizational deviance. The participants were 197 employed postgraduate students who enrolled in the Master of Business Administration programme at two universities located in the north-west geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The model tested suggests that both punishment certainty and punishment severity predict organizational deviance through the influence of self-regulatory efficacy. Results suggest that self-regulatory efficacy partially mediates the relationship between punishment certainty and organizational deviance. Similarly, results suggest that the relationship between punishment severity and organizational deviance was partially mediated by self-regulatory efficacy.

One of the primary concerns on most business activities is to determine an efficient method for ranking mutual funds. This paper performs an empirical investigation to rank 42 mutual funds listed on Tehran Stock Exchange using Sortino method over the period 2011-2012. The results of survey have been compared with market return and the results have confirmed that there were some positive and meaningful relationships between Sortino return and market return. In addition, there were some positive and meaningful relationship between two Sortino methods.

This paper performs an investigation to rank different strategies in an engineering firm in Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among all experts who worked for a firm in engineering field named Kara Sazeh Matin. The study first determines four key strategies for development of firm’s objectives including improvement in buy/sell system and marketing planning, financial and cost management, human resources management and technology management. The study ranks these attributes based on fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) in fuzzy format. The results indicate the firm must take over one of the well-known construction firms to develop its operations.

Job satisfaction is normally referred to cognitive, affective and evaluative reactions or attitude and state, which is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or experience. Organizational commitment has been defined as the extent where an individual accepts, internalizes, and views his/her role based on organizational values and objectives. The purpose of present research is to investigate the relationship between employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Red Crescent Society’s Textile Industries of Islamic Republic of Iran. (N=180 and n=106). Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and Allen and Meyer’s Organizational Commitment Questionnaires are used for collecting data. There were significant relationships between employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and their dimensions as descripted in results and conclusion.

This examines the impact of strategic thinking on the performance of Mashhad municipal mangers. Strategic thinking as one of the ways of thinking has a crucial place in the modern world and plays essential role in major issues at different organizational levels including individual decision-making and planning. We expand our horizons and take the opportunity to increase our performance using strategic thinking. Organizations are being involved in competitive and chaotic situations; therefore, they need managers with strategic thinking. Nevertheless, there are some organizations throughout the world managing their business activities in increasingly difficult situations with highly developed duties. Therefore, they need strategic thinkers to cope up with the mentioned problems and Mashhad Municipality is no exception to this policy because it has a special place among all aspects of metropolitan districts. Thus, this study has attempted to explain of the impact of strategic thinking on the performance of Mashhad municipal managers. The results obtained from the study show that strategic thinking had an acceptable level among municipal managers of Mashhad City and all factors of strategic thinking improved their performance.

There are many studies on how to share women’s involvement in economic activities and what sectors of industries could contribute more to their job involvement. This paper presents an empirical investigation to learn how economic growth in service industry, agricultural industry as well as other industries could contribute on economic growth. The study uses vector error correction to study the relationship between value added and women’s job opportunities in Iran over the period 1951-2003. In industrial sector, the results of the survey indicate that an increase of one percent on growth domestic product (GDP) and wage increases 4.47% and reduces 1.95 % of women’s employment, respectively. In addition, an increase of one percent on GDP and wage increases 0.24% and reduces 0.25 % of women’s employment in service industry, respectively. Finally, an increase of one percent in GDP increases wage by 4.47% and reduces women’s employment by 1.95%, respectively.

This paper prioritizes the trust factors among electronic banking clients of an Iranian bank named Parsian Bank. The study first analyzes and reviews the literature and interviews with experts of electronic banking and academicians and determines client trust as the most important factor for development of electronic banking. The study also determines different factors associated with trust, which includes individual factors, banking factors and infrastructural factors. The sample populations consist of 25 experts who are academicians, managers and bank officers, clients of electronic banking. The necessary data was collected through conducting interviews and questionnaires and they are analyzed using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The research findings indicate that the attitudinal factors, telecommunication infrastructure and cultural factors were the most influential factors accordingly and the customer orientation and ease of access were the least influential factors.

This paper performs a survey to measure the performance of an administration unit in Iran based on a popular technique of balance scorecard. The study also uses Kano model to prioritize various factors and to provide necessary recommendation to improve the performance of different units. The survey has indicated that while these offices do well in terms of financial figures as well as customer perspective, they perform poorly in terms of learning and growth. According to our survey, it is essential to use information technology in general service offices, properly. In addition, these administrative agencies need to use hardware and software packages, more efficiently and these two basic items have received much attraction.

This paper performs an investigation on the effects of seven variables including growth domestic product, financial deepening, inflation rate, dependency burden, the number of bank’s branches, inflation rates given/charged on bank deposit. The study has been performed on one of Iranian banks named Sina Bank over the period 2006-2011. The implementation of individual regression analysis has detected a positive and meaningful relationship between growth domestic product, financial deepening, inflation rate and the number of branches on one side and bank deposit on the other side. In addition, the study has confirmed a negative and meaningful relationship between two variables of dependency burden as well as interest charged on bank’s clients and bank deposit. However, the result of our survey does not indicate that there was any relationship between interest rate paid to customers and bank deposit.