Studies have shown that in service organizations, quality can have a growth in customer satisfaction as its consequence, and when it regards the banking services, factors are brought up with regard to the quality of banking services, which include the speed in responding, providing products proportionate to the customer needs, and gaining competence. These concepts are shared by the issue of organizational agility; hence, the qualities as well as the bank's agility of the banking system embrace these concepts in common. Therefore, the study aims at studying the effect of the quality of electronic banking services on the bank's agility, and assesses the role of two mediator variables of the quality of service system and personnel behavior quality. Using a questionnaire comprised of 76 items about the above components and asking the line personnel in Bank Saderat Iran (BSI) in the branches both inside and outside of Iran, the research data was collected, and stratified random sampling was used. To analyze the data, the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used and the PLS software was employed to perform the computations. Results indicated that the model of the study has a high Goodness of Fit, and the quality of the electronic banking services had a significant effect on the bank's agility. In addition, the quality of electronic banking services affects the service system quality. The system service quality, also affects the employees' behavior. Therefore, it can be said that the electronic services quality and the bank's agility affect the personnel behavior quality through the mediated effect of the service system quality. The results of the present study can help the bank's executives to promote their bank's agility and the personnel behavior quality.

Performance measurement in energy industry plays an important role on increasing the productivity. Electricity is also among the most essential components of energy in mega cities like Tehran. The lack of a good service in this city may result unpleasant consequences on most civilians who live in this city. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the performance of six major electricity contractors in city of Tehran, Iran. The study implements grey numbers to handle any uncertainty associated with numbers. The study has also adopted four main perspectives used in balanced scorecard as part of PROMETHEE method to rank different contractors.

This paper presents a survey on the role of citizenship education in development of urban branding in city of Tehran, Iran. The study considers the effects of attitude, subjective norms, perceived control and intend adopted by the local community on development of urban branding. We design a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 400 randomly chosen people in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alphas for all components of the survey are well above the desirable level. Using Pearson correlation test as well as stepwise regression techniques, the study has determined a positive and meaningful effects of perceived control and intend adopted by the local community on urban branding.

Privatization is considered as the transfer of business from the government to the private sector. This process is often accomplished in an attempt to reduce the size of government, increase the productivity and export activities. There is no doubt that in an export oriented economy, government tries to promote expert based activities by making necessary changes on rules and regulations. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors on promoting export in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some experts active in steel industry. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy is equal to 0.839 and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity yields an approximation Chi-Square value of 2485.02 (Sig. = 0.000, df = 276). Using principle component analysis with Varimax rotation, the study has detected five important factors including human resources development, productivity management, marketing management, creating competitive environment and building necessary infrastructures, which influence the most on export activities.

Managers are ever seeking for better ways of managing their constraints to improve their company’s value chain performance and competitiveness. Although previous literature explored constraint management, it was inconclusive as to how constraint management could affect the value chain performance in tea processing chains. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between constraint management and firm value chain performance of tea processing firms. This study undertook an empirical study using survey questionnaire design to collect data. The respondents were production managers who have experience in production activities. The study applied multiple correlation and regression models to test the hypothesis. The results indicate that constraints management had a significant positive impact on improvement in quality, time, flexibility, cost and resource utilization in tea firms. This study provides a broad analysis of how organizations can improve their value chain performance for sustainable development by managing various constraints in the internal value chain. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study of the relationship between constraints management and value chain performance using data from tea processing firms operating in Kenya.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of transformational leadership style and organizational culture on the formation of organizational cynicism in the Agricultural Bank in city of Tehran. The population of this study consisted of 1022 employees of the Agricultural Bank of Tehran. A total of 304 questionnaires were distributed, of which 264 valid questionnaires were collected. These questionnaires were distributed randomly among the male and female employees in Tehran branches of Agricultural Bank. Standard questionnaire of transformational leadership model, standard questionnaire of organizational culture model and organizational cynicism were applied in this study. In this study SPSS19 and Smart PLS software were used to analyze the collected data. Hypothesis testing showed that at first, Transformational leadership style had no significant effect on the formation of organizational cynicism in the Agricultural Bank in Tehran, and organizational culture had a significant negative impact on the formation of organizational cynicism in the Agricultural Bank in the second hypothesis.

In a competitive environment many companies usually outsource their logistics functions to the Third Party Logistics (TPL) providers to focus on their core businesses. However, the selection of proper TPL provider is not an easy task because of conflicting quantitative and qualitative criteria. This study presents an integrated model based on three well-known methods Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the evaluation and selection of TPL providers. DEMATEL computes the effects between selection criteria while ANP derives the weights of each criterion related with TPL providers’ selection problem. Finally DEA presents a mathematical model for ranking TPL providers alternatives with respect to various criteria. The application of integrated model is demonstrated with a case study. The novelty of this study comes from the fact that there is no research in the literature integrating DEMATEL, ANP and DEA for the TPL selection problems.

This paper aims to examine the role of spirituality and ethics in higher education quality improvement. Two questionnaires were made by the researchers, the first one was completed by heads of departments of Islamic Azad University, Science & Research Campus, Tehran, Iran (N1=n1=200) to determine the components of spirituality, ethics and quality improvement (Cronbach’s alpha=0.82). The second one was completed by PhD students (N2=1475 & n2=206) in order to find out whether or not there are positive correlations among spirituality, ethics and higher education quality improvement and to determine the role of spirituality and ethics in higher education quality improvement (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.85). To ensure the validity of measurement instruments, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were applied. Findings of the research indicated there was a positive correlation among spirituality, ethics and higher education quality improvement.

Selection of the qualified and the most appropriate employee plays crucial role for the success of the businesses. The selection process is complex and contains both subjective and objective criteria to be considered. For this reason, in this paper, Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) is proposed for employee selection. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed method, the most appropriate software engineer is selected for a technology firm. By this way, a scientific multi criteria decision making (MCDM) method is proposed to the firm that determines the best candidate intuitively with traditional methods.

In the light of recent excess of reported crimes in various states and union territories (UTs) of India, it becomes imperative to evaluate the police performance of different states/UTs in order to identify the poor/under-performing ones requiring immediate attention. Although, a limited amount of research work has been carried out in this area, mainly employing data envelopment analysis approach, a definitive ranking of Indian states/UTs with respect to their police performance has never been derived using any of the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques. Thus, the aim of this paper is focused on evaluating and ranking of all the Indian states/UTs with respect to their performance in minimizing criminal activities while employing additive ratio assessment (ARAS) method as a simplistic MCDM tool. It is revealed that Chandigarh evolves out as the best performer amongst all the 35 Indian states/UTs, while West Bengal comes out as the worst performer. A detailed analysis of the results is also carried out to identify those Indian states/UTs where substantial improvement can be brought in.