Abstract: In this paper, we study the effect of different influencing factors on profitability of banking system in Iran for a panel data from 2001 to 2010. The sample of banking system includes ten different banks and two different types of internal and external variables are considered. Internal factors include ownership ratio, ratio of bank customers' deposit to banks' assets, ratio of total loans given to all assets, ratio of total interest free loans on total assets, ratio of interest free revenues on total revenue. External factors include economic growth, actual rate of interest and inflation rate. The proposed model of this paper uses econometrics method to investigate the proposed model and the preliminary results indicate that ownership ratio, ratio of total equity on total assets, along with inflation rate have negative impact on profitability. In addition, the ratio of customers' deposit on total assets, the ratio of total loans on total assets and economic growth have positive impact on profitability.

Abstract: Most financial managers believe that there are different factors hindering decision-making about the capital structure of a company. This hindrance is so that, in some financial management literatures capital structure is called the mystery of capital. Financial managers widely believe that financial leverage enjoys a noticeable status in managerial decision making as well as management of the framework of balance sheet. The primary purpose of this research is to present applications of equity modules and to study effective factors on such models on Tehran stock exchange. The study covers data over a period of five years from 2001 to 2005. The study analyzes and tests relevant data to firm’s debt ratio and corporate size as effective factors on cost-of-equity. The preliminary findings indicate that contrary to the commonly held belief in financial management theorems, debts ratio has the least effect on cost-of-equity. Nevertheless, the study suggests that the variant of company’s size has a meaningful relationship with cost-of-equity. To calculate cost-of-equity, CAPM, Gordon and return ratio methods are used. Findings show that CAPM has more validity compared with other varieties. On the other hand, the results indicate that there is a 95-percent probability proving that liquidity has a significant negative effect on financial leverage.

Abstract: Experiences of different countries with efficient tax systems have shown that the high share of tax resources than non-tax sources could prevent many unpleasant economical events. In other words, an efficient tax system could ensure economic system against many different risks. Tax is also a primary source for developing economy used by government. In this study, we investigate the relationship between economic growth and tax among D8 countries using panel data from 1990 to 2009. The results indicate growth domestic product is the most important factor and these governments could collect more tax as the economic figures improve. The results of our survey show that an increase of one percent on GDP will increase taxable income for about 0.0014119 percent. The tourism has more impact since an increase of one unit in tourism's income; taxable income will increase for about 10.26257 units. One the contrary to other variables, unemployment has a negative impact on taxable income.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present mathematical models optimizing all materials flows in supply chain. In this research a fuzzy multi-objective nonlinear mixed- integer programming model with piecewise linear membership function is applied to design a multi echelon supply chain network (SCN) by considering total transportation costs and capacities of all echelons with fuzzy objectives. The model that is proposed in this study has 4 fuzzy functions. The first function is minimizing the total transportation costs between all echelons (suppliers, factories, distribution centers (DCs) and customers). The second one is minimizing holding and ordering cost on DCs. The third objective is minimizing the unnecessary and unused capacity of factories and DCs via decreasing variance of transported amounts between echelons. The forth is minimizing the number of total vehicles that ship the materials and products along with SCN. For solving such a problem, as nodes increases in SCN, the traditional method does not have ability to solve large scale problem. So, we applied a Meta heuristic method called Genetic Algorithm. The numerical example is real world applied and compared the results with each other demonstrate the feasibility of applying the proposed model to given problem, and also its advantages are discussed.

Abstract: The anthropometric data of student in selected tertiary institutions in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria was investigated and this was compared with some selected foreign countries. The study was to determine whether design improvement and further study is required in order to improve the conditions in Nigeria tertiary institutions. The anthropometrics measurements data were collected from 720 students of selected institutions. The data indicate a substantial degree of variability between the Nigerian tertiary students’ body and the foreign counterparts. Since most of the furniture in use in our tertiary institutions in Abeokuta, Nigeria were designed and constructed using the anthropometric data of students in foreign countries, there is need for anthropometric data of Nigerian students in the tertiary institution for the design and construction of furniture to suit them. The result is of great concern which could affect students in other institutions throughout Nigeria and could also pose a great risk of having back problem among students in Nigeria. Statement of Relevancy: The chair and table used in Nigeria were designed with reference to the measurement of other countries. The database of the Nigerian students will be very useful parameter in guiding principle for the designing of future equipment to be used in classrooms, laboratories and lecture theaters of the institutions.

Abstract: In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to measure the effects of various factors on operating loss in one of major Iranian banks called Bank Mellat. The proposed study of this paper uses a standard questionnaire and distributes it among 57 people who are mainly in top management levels. The questions are categorized into five groups including events related to the processes and methods, events outside the organization, related events within the organization and business disruptions and system failure. The results of our survey confirm that the loss associated with events related to the processes and methods increases operating risk meaningfully, the loss associated with business disruptions and system failure increases operating risk meaningfully and the loss associated with related events within the organization increases operating risk meaningfully. However, our survey do not confirm that the loss associated with events outside the organization increase operating, risk meaningfully. Finally, the preliminary survey of our analysis shows that there is not enough evidence to believe that the effects of business disruption and internal affairs are significantly different from the other event.

Abstract: Knowledge management (KM) plays an important role on increasing organizational performance especially governmental agencies where there are different skills and knowledge within the organization. In this study, we present a study to investigate the effect of KM on having more customer oriented organizations. We use a standard questionnaire among 146 randomly selected employees out of 170 people who work for four governmental organizations in city of Chahbahar, Iran. The collected information is analyzed using structural equation modeling and by validating the results using Cronbach alphas of more than the minimum desired level of 0.70, we determine the positive relationships between KM and three other variables including customer absorption, customer retention and customer relationship management. The results of this survey reveal that an increase of one unit in KM yields almost the same increase in three mentioned variables accordingly. In addition, an increase of one percent in KM will increase customer orientation by almost one percent.

Abstract: Social networks are online gathering places for people who would like to share their interests and activities. In this context, advertising through social networks is one of the most important topics in the field of marketing and brand that has been considered only in few studies. This study examines the impact of advertising on brand equity through social networks in the beverage industry (PepsiCo). This research study was to survey and collect data from the a standard questionnaire. PepsiCo brand, which is a well known beverage industry worldwide is selected for the proposed study of this paper. Thus, all customers of Pepsi products in city of Tehran are considered as statistical research community and a sample size of 385 people is selected for the proposed study. In order to analyze the data, we use structural equations method and certified factor analysis. The results of our survey indicate that advertisement on social networks has a positive impact in this industry. Based on the results of our survey, we realize that there are some positive relationship between social network advertisement and quality perception, brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand association when the level of significance is one percent.

Abstract: In the changing world with various customers’ demands the businesses tend to improve their advantages to beat their rivals by means of better quality, lower prices and so. For Iranian polyester market quality is of crucial importance and is achieved through changing and updating technologies. According to highly regarded model of CAPTECH, which is recommended by UNIDO, technology parameters are defined in each phase and not generally as a whole. In the end the biggest gaps are defined. The main goal is to prioritize the main parameters affecting Iranian polyester company's quality. In order to fulfill our goal, 20 high and medium managers were questioned for this paper. The questions were gathered according to UNIDO samples. After a qualitative and quantitative test we concluded that the biggest gap is for supply chain(56.91) and the lowest gap is for combination phase(43.97).

Abstract: The application of strategic knowledge management requires specific organization structure due to unique and particular characteristics of knowledge. In other words, by passing through industry age toward knowledge age, strategic knowledge management is considered by organizations dramatically and by considering this new competitive edge, universities should prepare an appropriate background for strategic knowledge management (encoding strategy and personalizing strategy). The primary purpose of this research is to find out whether there is a meaningful relationship between organizational structure (recognition, focus and complexity) and strategic knowledge management (codification strategy and personalization strategy) in Azad University, Kermanshah. Organizational structure is considered as independent variables and strategic knowledge management is dependent variables. When it comes to the purpose, present research is an applicable research and based on its nature and method, it is descriptive and survey research. Statistical society consists of university president, vise-president and dean of faculties of Azad University, Kermanshah; during a period of the first half of the year of 2011. Therefore, the sampling method is stratified sampling. Statistical society contains 60 people who are adjusted to 52 sample people by the use of Morgan table. Data collection tool is questionnaire structure questionnaire of Robbins and strategic knowledge management questionnaire of Carolina & ÁngelL. The results of the research show that there is a meaningful relationship between organizational structure and strategic knowledge management in Azad University, Kermanshah, according to codification and personalization strategy. Some suggestions are offered at the end of this research.

Abstract: In global market, factors such as precedence of competitors extending shave on market, promoting quality of services and identifying customers' needs are important. This paper attempts to identify strategic services in one of the biggest governmental banks in Iran called Melli bank for getting competition merit using Kano and SERVQUAL compound models and to extend operation quality and to provide suitable strategies. The primary question of this paper is on how to introduce high quality services in this bank. The proposed model of this paper uses a hybrid of three quality-based methods including SERVQUAL, QFD and Kano models. Statistical society in this article is all clients and customers of Melli bank who use this banks' services and based on random sampling method, 170 customers were selected. The study was held in one of provinces located in west part of Iran called Semnan. Research findings show that Melli banks' customers are dissatisfied from the quality of services and to solve this problem the bank should do some restructuring to place some special characteristics to reach better operation at the heed of its affairs. The characteristics include, in terms of their priorities, possibility of transferring money by sale terminal, possibility of creating wireless pos, accelerating in doing bank works, getting special merits to customers who use electronic services, eliminating such bank commission, solving problems in least time as disconnecting system, possibility of receiving foreign exchange by ATM and suitable parking in city.

Abstract: In this paper, we perform an empirical study to investigate the impact of economical stability on the amount of investment coming from the private sector. We calculate macroeconomics instability index (MIX) using the existing methods in the literature. We have also used Glezakos (1973) method [Glezakos,C.(1973). Export instability and economic growth: A statistical verification. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 21(3), 670-678.], which considers long-term deviation of real values as instability index. Therefore, we use four variables of inflation rate (TINF), the ratio of budget deficit on growth domestic product (GDP) (TBD), foreign debt on GDP (TFD) and the ratio of actual currency rate on nominate currency (TFD). The preliminary results show that the short-term changes on LNIP with one lag and LNIV have positive impact on LNIP. In addition, any short term changes on LNMII has negative and meaningful impact on LNIP and approximately 0.67 percent of difference between the actual and long term are discounted in each period. The results indicate that instability index has negative effect even in short term on Iran's industry. This shows the relevant importance of instability on economy.

Abstract: This paper introduces a tool named EB-QFD used for electronic business planning in strategic issues. Nowadays, the challenges of manufacturing sectors for achieving global competition will depend on their speed to change from domestic to world class manufacturing organizations, also the rapid global deployment of electronic business, information technology and their benefits have required managers to make decision, which look for a balance world class manufacturing factors with strategic business goals. To ensure that selected e-business strategies meet world class manufacturing requirements, organizations should simultaneously explore and communicate the relationship between world class manufacturing and electronic business. Electronic business planners can achieve competitive advantages through the implementation of an integration of quality function deployment (QFD) with electronic business (EB) called EB-QFD. This study is based on data collected from an Iranian auto parts manufacturing company and the implementation of EB-QFD. In this research, EB-QFD contains two parts named EB-WHATs as needs of Electronic Business and EB-HOWs as resources for EB-WHATs. Statistical analysis points that there are positive relationships between using EB-WHATs and EB-HOW and world class manufacturing factors as competitive advantages. We used electronic business systems for EB-WHATs and resource based view (RBV) for EB-HOWs.

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind the prospect and growth of the societies. Sound and wise decisions pave the way for them to carry out these highly important functions. Entrepreneurs are to discover and exploit opportunities. Therefore, they must gather sufficient and pertinent information. Entrepreneurs, like most human beings face complex and ambiguous decision-making situations, not to mention their lack of time and source to gather and process the data. Under these circumstances, entrepreneurs are prone making biases decisions. There are many reasons identified for this entrepreneurial decision making biases, such as the high cost of rational decision making, limitations in information processing, differences in their styles and procedures, or information overload, environmental complexity, environmental uncertainty. These biases are neither totally harmful nor completely useful and have to be seen as natural human characteristics. What makes entrepreneurial decision-making biases important is their effects on the decisions and thus the outcome of the enterprises. Entrepreneurial decision-making biases, deliberate or unintentional can seal the fate of the enterprises, therefore studying them meticulously is crucial. Literature has shown that experience could be an effective factor in decision-making biases. In this paper, we try to find out the impact of experience in Iranian high tech entrepreneurs’ major decision-making biases by a qualitative approach. Finally, it was concluded that experience is influential in shaping overconfidence bias.

Abstract: Tendency to industrial clustering at the end of the twentieth century was a turning point in industrial development programs in most countries of the world. Industrial clustering is a model of industrial organization, which has entered industrial literature as a new development strategy. Clustering has provided utilization of efficiencies of scale and aggregation as well as efficiencies of collective efforts by creating conditions for competitiveness advantage, economical growth and export development in the international environment. Today, industrial clustering has been considered as a fundamental strategy for economic development and growth in almost all countries of the world including Iran. This paper aims to assess and to explain important factors affecting the competitiveness of industrial clusters. It also shows the relationship among these factors together. The proposed study uses fuzzy DEMATEL technique; hence, the affecting factors of competitiveness of industrial clusters in the automotive cluster in one of the provinces of Iran is investigated and the importance of each of these factors and their relationships are identified.

Abstract: Torrance tests of creative thinking have been widely used to measure the impact of different items such as creativity on different groups of children. In this study, we perform an empirical study to measure the effects of endurance, power-based and flexibility on a group of children's creativity, originality and flexibility. The study chooses a sample of 341 from 2978 preschool children and distributes a questionnaire among them where 153 were female and 188 of them were male. Cronbach alpha for creativity, originality and fluency were calculated as 0.814, 0.822 and 0.788, respectively. The results of our study indicate that there are some positive and meaningful relationship among three components of creativity, originality and fluency before and after accomplishing test. The impact of test was measured for three types of sport activities including endurance, power-based and flexibility tests. After applying 32 sessions of sporting games, flexibility games represent a mean value of 32.40, which is higher than the other two tests and it maintains meaningful value compared with two other sporting tests of endurance and power base tests.

Abstract: During the last decades, the importance of small firms as one of the main economical parts in each country has been proved. Considering to the resources limitation in one hand, and the competitive global market in the other hand, it is very important that firms can obtain sustainable competitive advantages (SCAs) to compete with other rivals. This paper, at the first step, tries to explore the potentially SCAs of Qom's small firms by using of Structural Equation Model (SEM). Then, the real current situation of firms in using these competitive advantages has been examined. The results tell that except firms' location, other potentially SCAs do not have acceptable condition.

Abstract: Intellectual capital is a type of asset measuring ability of economic agency in order tomake wealth. These assets do not have physical and objective nature and are intangible assets being achieved through utilization of relative assets with human resources, organizational operation and foreign relations from economic agency. Measuring this issue is important from intra-organizational and extra-organizational views. In this paper, we present survey based on Fuzzy TOPSIS to find important factors influencing intellectual capital management. The proposed model of this paper considers different factors, which exist in the literature and prioritize them based on different criteria. The results of our survey identified seven items as the most influencing factors.

Abstract: One of the key challenges of nurse scheduling problem (NSP) is the number of constraints placed on preparing the timetable, both from the regulatory requirements as well as the patients’ demand for the appropriate nursing care specialists. In addition, the preferences of the nursing staffs related to their work schedules add another dimension of complexity. Most solutions proposed for solving nurse scheduling involve the use of mathematical programming and generally considers only the hard constraints. However, the psychological needs of the nurses are ignored and this resulted in subsequent interventions by the nursing staffs to remedy any deficiency and often results in last minute changes to the schedule. In this paper, we present a staff preference optimization framework solved with a greedy double swap heuristic. The heuristic yields good performance in speed at solving the problem. The heuristic is simple and we will demonstrate its performance by implementing it on open source spreadsheet software.

Abstract: In this paper, we consider job shop scheduling and machine location problem, simultaneously. Processing, transportation, and setup times are defined as deterministic parameters. The purpose of this paper is to determine machine location and job scheduling such that the make span and transportation cost is minimized. Therefore, the proposed model is a multi-objective problem one, where the first objective function minimizes make span and another minimizes the transportation cost. To solve the multi-objective problem, two methods are evaluated. Considering combination of job shop scheduling problem and machine location problem makes the proposed model more complex than job shop scheduling problem, which is an NP-hard problem. Therefore, to solve the proposed model, genetic algorithm as a meta-heuristic algorithm is implemented. To show the efficiency of the proposed genetic algorithm, 6×6 job shop scheduling problems are considered.

Abstract: Ecotourism is one of the most popular methods in green economy and it can generate wealth and develop the economy of developing countries. Ecotourism supports environmental conservation, creates economic opportunities by emphasizing on benefits of the local community, and suggests that the involvement of the residents plays important role for the efficient management of tourism. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the impact of ecotourism on developing the economy of a historical place located in south west of Iran called Seydan. The proposed study distributes some questionnaires among 400 randomly selected people who participate in our survey. The results confirm that ecotourism can contribute the economy of the region, significantly. We also perform a comprehensive strategic planning to find out more about strength, weakness, treats and opportunities surrounding the region.

Abstract: Management of energy plays an important role on having sustainable growth on the economy of developing countries. Electricity is part of the main infrastructure of any country, it can help develop many industries, and any shortage in electricity can jeopardize many heavy industries. In Iran, for many years electricity used to be subsided by the government hoping that economy grows faster but this caused a major problem for this industry since the electricity industry could not handle its expenses and faced with somewhat irreversible crises. In this paper, we present a system dynamic investigation to study the existing crises in this sector. The preliminary result of the implementation of system dynamic is that the sector needs to increase its productivity, significantly and lowers the cost of product.

Abstract: Performance-based budgeting (PBB) is the latest attempt to use performance indicators in allocation of resources in public sector. PBB experts normally attempt to place emphasis on output and outcome instead of input. Iran has made efforts to establish the PBB system but so far this goal has not been realized. The methodology of the research is descriptive by the means of survey-analytical approach. In the research, the possibility of establishment of PBB in Iran is examined from three perspectives (Policymaking, Implementing, and Monitoring). The conceptual model of this research is formed with a comprehensive review of literature of PBB all over the world. At first, with an extensive review of literature in the countries who implemented PBB or trying to implement it, we identify all variables, which are necessary for a suitable Performance Budgeting model. Then the PBB experts test the necessity of these variables in Iran and finally the existence has been proved by the statistical methods with the Iranian model.

Abstract: The recent global developments followed by altered attitudes have improved women’s contribution to small and medium enterprises. However, women’s employment in Iranian SME is not in a good condition. In fact, attitude of society towards women together with socio-cultural environments have resulted in reduced rate of women’s employment in developing companies. However, for changing these attitudes the relevant layout should be created anyway. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to enumerate factors affecting women’s employment in Tehran SME from those women’s views. In this regard, we applied Lerner's model which is more comprehensive than the other similar models. The analysis was carried out through distribution of some questionnaires among a statistical population including 384 women living in the city of Tehran. After data analysis and hypothesis testing, it was concluded that economic elements (as an environmental factor), achievement requirement (as an individual factor) and encouragement (as an organizational factors) respectively affect women’s employment.

Abstract: With ever increasing demand for manufactured products of hard alloys and metals with high surface finish and complex shape geometry, more interest is now being paid to non-traditional machining (NTM) processes, where energy in its direct form is used to remove material from workpiece surface. Compared to conventional machining processes, NTM processes possess almost unlimited capabilities and there is a strong believe that use of NTM processes would go on increasing in diverse range of applications. Presence of a large number of NTM processes along with complex characteristics and capabilities, and lack of experts in NTM process selection domain compel for development of a structured approach for NTM process selection for a given machining application. Past researchers have already attempted to solve NTM process selection problems using various complex mathematical approaches which often require a profound knowledge in mathematics/artificial intelligence from the part of process engineers. In this paper, four NTM process selection problems are solved using an integrated PROMETHEE (preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation) and GAIA (geometrical analysis for interactive aid) method which would act as a visual decision aid to the process engineers. The observed results are quite satisfactory and exactly match with the expected solutions.

Abstract: This paper presents the development of an instrument for measuring strategic control systems (SCS). Although SCS has received considerable attention in the literature, most of the discussions, on the elements that constitute SCS, are limited to descriptive statements. Thus, the theoretical construct of SCS suffers from lack of extensive statistical validation procedures. However, there are a few authors that had initiated the development of an instrument to measure the SCS. Their small effort had also been criticized due to the inconsistency among authors in defining SCS, which would likely affect the validity of the instrument being developed. Given this lacuna, this paper has developed and validated an instrument for conceptualizing SCS, specifically under the environment of Quality Management strategy. Based on a careful and systematic process of instrument development, this paper revealed that SCS consists of two important dimensions, namely strategy implementation and strategic resource allocation. In developing this instrument, a total number of 205 respondents were involved. The findings reported in this paper would benefit future researchers in measuring SCS, particularly for survey-based research.

Abstract: It has been a long time that researchers are trying to find out on why some people have better mental health than others do and some are more successful than the others are. There are many evidences to believe that having general intelligence does not necessarily yield prosperity and success and it could be accounted up to 20% of the success, whereas the remaining 80% is associated with other issues. The present study attempts to perform a comparative study on emotional intelligence and cognitive among successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. We adopt a standard test, which includes 133 questions and distribute it between two groups of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs in province of Sistan and Balochestan located in south west of Iran. The results of our ANOVA test when the level of significance is five percent reveal that emotional intelligence can substantially impact on the success of entrepreneurs.

Abstract: One of the primary governmental concerns is to understand the level of economical and social development in different locations of a country. Understanding social and economical characteristics of different cities help provide necessary assistance for underdeveloped areas and promote some value added activities such as tourism in better-developed areas. In this paper, we present an empirical study based on Factor Analysis to rank different towns, villages and cities located in city of Isfahan, Iran in terms of various socio-economical criteria. The study gathers necessary information from 1996 to 2007. The results of our survey indicate that three cities of Feridan, Nayeen and Falavarjan are in the best position in terms of different social and cultural criteria while Lenjan, Barkhar and Mymehand Isfahan are located in the worst positions.

Abstract: Purpose of this research paper is to find out relationship between varying color scheming in advertising and buying behavior. Data for this purpose were collected from 200 people through questionnaire. Results indicated that buying behavior is greatly influenced by color scheming of a product and its advertisement. Strategies discussing how to enhance color scheming of product and use of colors in ads are also discussed.

Abstract: The study performs an empirical survey to measure the impact of stress among people with various gender and marital status in a hydropower unit located in city of Esfahan, Iran. The study performs the survey among all 81 people who were working for customer service section of this company and consists of two parts, in the first part; we gather all private information such as age, gender, education, job experience, etc. through seven important questions. In the second part of the survey, there were 66 questions, which included all the relevant factors impacting employees' stress. We implement two Levin and t-student tests to see whether gender or marital status has any meaningful influences on creating stress among people. The results indicate that gender has no meaningful impact on creating stress among employees who worked for this hydro plant except difficulty of job conditions. The other findings of this paper is that stress posed from management team had different impacts on employees with various marital status but there were no meaningful differences between married and single couples in terms of other factors posing stress such as unsuitable working conditions, fear of job stability or difficulty of job conditions.

Abstract: Today, customer return issue in e-purchase process is considered as important topic in companies' marketing and managerial decision making. In this paper, we present an empirical study on measuring the impact of e-loyalty for an Iranian auto-industry called Pars Khodro co. The proposed study measures reliability, responsiveness, design, security/privacy as independent variables, e-confidence and e-satisfaction as mediator variable, and e-loyalty as dependent variable. The preliminary results show that effectiveness of e-satisfaction and e-confidence on loyalty and effectiveness of e-confidence on e-satisfaction are in high level. Reliability/Fulfillment and security variables on e-confidence have significant impacts, and effectiveness level of reliability/Fulfillment and responsiveness and website design on e-satisfaction is high. The results indicate that there is no significant relationship between responsiveness and e-confidence.

Abstract: This paper investigates the dynamics of the NASDAQ topology before, during, and after 2008 financial crisis. First, multiresolution analysis by virtue of wavelet transform is employed to denoise each NASDAQ sector return series. Second, the correlation matrix of sectors is built and analyzed in each time period to view comovements of sectors. Third, hierarchical clustering trees are constructed in each time period to find out how the structure of the NASDAQ market evolves through time. Our results suggest that interrelationships between sectors become stronger in times of crisis and especially in post-crisis period. In addition, some markets tend to form the same cluster in all time periods; for instance the Industrial and Bank sectors and the Telecommunication and Computer sectors. However, the general topology of the NASDAQ market has been considerably changed over periods. In sum, the complex structure of the NASDAQ market is dynamic and is more integrated after 2008 financial crisis. This result indicates that there are less diversification opportunities in the post-crisis period in comparison with pre-crisis period. These empirical findings are important for the development of subsequent portfolio strategies.

Abstract: With the rapid growth of the World Wide Web, finding useful information from the Internet has become a critical issue. Automatic classification of user navigation patterns provides a useful tool to solve these problems. In this paper, we propose an approach for classification of users’ navigation patterns and prediction of users’ future requests. Users’ profiles are constructed based on Web log server files and one of clustering methods is implemented to users’ profiles for assigning navigation patterns. Finally, using neural network, recommender engine produces a relevant recommendation list of web pages to the active user. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed approach has high accuracy and coverage in prediction of users’ future requests.

Abstract: Cheap subsidized fuel supplied to transportation section has the most impact on traffic jam and air pollution in the Iranian megacities, especially Tehran. The 5th Five-Year Development Plan of the country aims at elimination of energy subsidies. Accordingly, this study examines the effects of the increase in the price of energy carriers in two different scenarios on megacities’ traffic and the corresponding variables. A system dynamics model is first designed to identify the most effective variables on traffic and urban transportation. The model considers an increase in the price of energy carriers based on the world price trends, until 2014 (the final year of the Subsidy Targeting Program), and evaluates the its impact on the relevant variables. The results reveal a short time reduction in transportation traffic volume. However, due to incremental trends in demand and production of vehicles, it returns to its first state.

Abstract: During the past few years, there have been tremendous fluctuations on different currencies. For instance, European common currency, Euro, has be fluctuated between 0.60 to 0.9 against US dollar. Therefore, it is important to study the behavior of currency valuations using different techniques. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the impact of different items on risk of foreign currency using value at risk (VaR) and regression methods. The proposed model of this paper investigates whether the risk of open positions of six foreign currencies including US dollar, Euro, British Pound, Switzerland Frank, Norwegian Kroner and United Emirate Dirham increase during the time horizon. The proposed study of this paper uses historical daily prices of these currencies for a fiscal year of 2011 in one of private banks located in Iran and measures the relative risk. The results of the implementation of two methods of VaR and linear regression indicate that the risk of open positions increases during the time horizon.

Abstract: The primary objective of this paper is to study the impact of stress on educational school- children who are enrolled in guided schools. Teenagers are normally facing with stress and feelings and when the level of stress increases, they may face with problems, which would become more serious as they get older. In this study, we perform a standard stress relief program (CS-R Coping With Stress-Revised) and try to reduce the burden of stress among 1240 students who attended guided schools. We split the people into two groups of experiment and witness and performed the study among one group. Before the exam, there was no meaningful difference between their average markings but after performing the exam, the average marking of the experienced students was increase by 0.53. The results clearly indicate that it is possible to make significant change on students' personal characteristics.

Abstract: One of the primary concerns of many governmental agencies is to create job and working opportunities. The job creation is often promoted by loans devoted from the banks. This paper performs an empirical study to measure the relative efficiency of job creation from year 2002 to 2010 in different cities including Semnan, Dameghan, Shahrood, Garmsar and Mahdishahr located in west region of Iran. The proposed model of this paper uses data envelopment analysis where there are two inputs including the granted loans to private sector and the job applicants and two outputs including the assigned to work and the number of jobs created. The results indicate that the city of Garmsar represents the highest efficiency and Damghan maintains the lowest efficiency.

Abstract: Cash flow analysis is one of the most popular methods for investigating the outcome of an economical project. The costs and benefits of a construction project are often involved with uncertainty and it is not possible to find a precise value for a particular project. In this paper, we present a simple method to calculate the net present value of a cash flow when both costs and benefits are given as triangular numbers. The proposed model of this paper uses Delphi method to figure out the fair values of all costs and revenues and then using fizzy programming techniques, it calculates the fuzzy net present value. The implementation of the proposed model is demonstrated using a simple example.

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of drought stress and plant density on yield, component yield and content oil of Safflower. The paper conducts an experiment spilt block in the form of randomized complete block design in three replications at the research farm of agriculture college of Zanjan university in the year 2009. The main factor includes four levels of drought stress, which are normal, cut of one time irrigating before flowering, cut of one time irrigating after flowering, cut of one time irrigating in grain filling stage and sub plot including three-level plant density (200, 300, 400 thousands plant per each hectare). The results of experiment showed that biologic yield, seed yield, component yield and oil yield in different levels of drought stress and plant density were significantly different. The greatest biologic yield and seed yield were for treat cut of one time irrigating before flowering and treat 200 thousand bushes per each hectare. The highest seed yield and oil yield getting for treat normal and after that for treat cut of one time irrigating in grain filling stage.

Abstract: A novel concept, local content, in oil industry is gradually emerging. Local content should be defined in terms of value addition in local country (by local staff, local materials, local services and facilities) rather than in terms of ownership of the company performing the value added activities. Many oil exporting countries have taken a positive approach toward local content development to maximize the benefits from oil and gas extraction. The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model for local content development in petroleum industry. Local content can generally be defined in terms of the ownership and/ or location of the enterprises involved in production and/ or the value-added in the production process. Local content promotion will have to vary significantly between countries, depending on the current status of their economic, political and social development. This model is useful for state governments to consider all aspects and factors affecting local content development generally. Local content development outcomes are economic growth, industrial growth and spillover effects. The paper begins with examining the factors accommodated in literature believed to influence the local content promotion. Based on our review, the conceptual model derived includes key factors of local content that evaluate local content development, and examine interrelations between local policies, local infrastructure, local environment, and local capability.

Abstract: The aim of this study is to study the relationship between organizational culture and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) with employees’ empowerment. Empowering employee’s breeds success by providing a suitable framework to utilize the necessary skills in an attempt to realize organizational goals. In this paper, four dimensions of employees’ empowerment including meaningfulness, choice, competence and impact are investigated. We also identify four dimensions for organizational culture including adaptability, consistency, involvement and mission. The paper also specifies five basic dimensions of OCB, which consists of altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy and civic virtue. These basic dimensions of both independent and dependent variables construct the research conceptual model and the required data is gathered from the Tehran Municipality. This proposed study considers 180 employees who participated in our survey. The investigation of the proposed model is also performed based on the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).

Abstract: Internet marketing plays an important role in today business enterprises. Today, many invest more and more to increase their abilities on providing better services on the internet. In this paper, we study the impact of five factors namely awareness from the site, site attractiveness, promotional effectiveness, effectiveness and Shopping impacts and effectiveness and loyalty on the success of electronic marketing. We have distributed a questionnaire consists of various questions and distributed them among 984 people and received 595 in Likert scale. The Cronbach alphas for all five sets of questions were well above the minimum desired level. We implement a multi regression function and the results confirm that all five mentioned factors impact the sales of e-marketing, significantly.

Abstract: Supplier selection, inventory management and optimal lot sizing has been one of the most important issues in many industries especially in production planning issues associated with texture industry. The proposed model of this paper first introduces an algorithm to choose the best supplier and it determines the optimal lot size using discount strategy. The proposed model of this paper considers different influencing factors such as location, quality of materials, cost, and mutual trust for supplier selection, determines their relative importance weights and then a discounting method is used to determine the ordering lot-size. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model of this paper can be implemented in texture industry, very efficiently since the ordering discount policy is not sensitive to changes on inventory holding and setup expenditures.

Abstract: Critical thinking (CT) has been one of the most popular interests among many scholars, educators, and others who are concerned with thinking skills. There are many evidences to believe that critical thinking skills can lead to more prepared, productive and employable students in the workforce. On the other hand, religious educations have been increasing subject of interest in different countries. When the rules and regulations in a country are based on religious, it is necessary to use religious educational systems as part of regular teaching education. However, there are common factors between CT and religious education and we can benefit from these common factors. This paper studies on recent advances on critical thinking and existing common factors between CT and religious educations. We explain that a hybrid of CT and religious education helps people search for truth, gives precise vision, helps use unbiased judgment, increases tolerance, helps become independent, helps people have fair judgment and work harder.

Abstract: In the current competitive environment, managers do their best to convert organizations under their supervision into competitive and responsive through creating capability of timely delivery of quality products and services. In the other word, they try to create value for their customers, which yield more profitability for stakeholders. In line with this, determining of inter-organizational factors and the relationships among these variables and supply chain performance plays an important role in achieving these objectives. The relationship modeling is a type of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, which requires applying experts to determine the relationships. The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is an MCDM tool, which not only can convert the relationships among cause and effect criteria into a visual structural framework, but also it can be used as a technique to handle the inner dependences within a set of criteria. This paper proposes an effective solution based on DEMATEL approach to help managers evaluate the relationships between inter-organizational factors and supply chain performance.

Abstract: In this paper, we propose an empirical survey between two groups of people who work for two types of governmental organizations asking them whether they prefer to receive their salaries based on their personal characteristics such as job experience, educational background and job performance. The results of our experience indicate that the people who participated in our survey mostly believe that the payment must be performed based on their performance and those who could contribute more must be entitled more in terms of their salaries. The preliminary results of our survey indicate that the payment system must be based on the level of education; work experiences and ob performance. In addition, the people who participate in our survey mostly believe that a transparent policy in payment system helps employees increase their motivation.

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical study to identify factors influenced on knowledge sharing of employees in organization. With wide literature review in knowledge management, we identify important factors in sharing knowledge including trust, culture, organizational structure, employee's attitude to share knowledge, and motivation method. The survey is based on a questionnaire consists of 25 items to measure the impact of important factors. Research population is selected from state and private bank's employees. The preliminary results show that only organizational structure has not significant impact on knowledge sharing.

Abstract: Nowadays, concerning organizations’ needs as well as emphasis from academia, an increasing endeavor from organizations to design and implement knowledge management projects is evident. However, implementation of any project, particularly in preliminary phases, could render some degree of risk and threat. Thus, it is obvious that failure in recognizing and managing those risks could bring about unsuccessfulness within an organization. In this paper, we have presented an empirical study to find the most important factors influencing knowledge management (KM) implementation in one of industries in Iran. The proposed study designed a questionnaire, distributed among most of the workers, and analyzed the results. The study divided KM implementation in four stages of planning, execution, development and institutional. We have also considered four important factors within each stage. The results indicate that culture was the most important barrier during all four stages. In addition, technology was an important issue during the execution stage while content was important during the development stage.

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are big potentials for developing economy in any countries. They provide new job opportunities and help economy boost. There are literally many industries, which rely on new these people and they are considered as the primary source of generating new jobs. In this paper, we discuss three entrepreneurship opportunities including universities, technical and vocational centers and women. Universities are able to educate highly skilled people and send them to business and they are able to create new ideas. Technical and vocational centers are, in fact, the best place for training basic or recent advances in technological skills through short term or long term planning. The survey also indicates that women can be considered as a good source of job creation. In this paper, we review the recent related literature on entrepreneurship opportunities in the world and discuss some of the related issues more specifically in Iran.

Abstract: One of the primary concerns in designing civil structures such as water storage dams and irrigation and drainage networks is to find economic scale based on possibility of natural incidents such as floods, earthquake, etc. Probable maximum precipitation (PMP) is one of well known methods, which helps design a civil structure, properly. In this paper, we study the maximum one-day precipitation using 17 to 50 years of information in 13 stations located in province of Zanjan, Iran. The proposed study of this paper uses two Hershfield methods, where the first one yields 18.17 to 18.48 for precipitation where the PMP24 was between 170.14 mm and 255.28 mm. The second method reports precipitation between 2.29 and 4.95 while PMP24 was between 62.33 mm and 92.08 mm. In addition, when the out of range data were deleted from the study of the second method, precipitation rates were calculated between 2.29 and 4.31 while PMP24 was between 76.08 mm and 117.28 mm. The preliminary results indicate that the second Hershfield method provide more stable results than the first one.

Abstract: The study performs an empirical study based on the implementation of ANOVA and LSD tests to measure the impact of stress among people with different job titles and ages in a hydropower unit located in city of Esfahan, Iran. The study performed the survey among all 81 people who were working for customer service section of this company and consisted of two parts, in the first part; we gather all private information such as age, gender, education, job experience, etc. through seven important questions. In the second part of the survey, there were 66 questions, which included all the relevant factors impacting employees' stress. Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.946, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. The implementation of ANOVA and LSD tests have revealed that there are no meaning differences among people with different job titles but people in different age groups maintained various level of stress.

Abstract: Leadership plays an important role among five main components of management. These days, many organizations try to resolve any existing conflicts through adapting an appropriate leadership strategy. During the past few years, there are increasing interests in examining the relationship between management style and conflict management. The proposed study of this paper performs an empirical study to find the relationship between relationship-oriented leadership style and solution-oriented strategy as well as between leadership style and conflict management. The proposed study distributed a questionnaire among 43 managers who were in different industries in west part of Iran. Most of the people who participated in our survey were male and they were between 25 to 30 years old. The study considers relationship between leadership style and conflict management, which includes the relationship between relationship-oriented and task-oriented leaderships with avoiding conflict management strategy, solution and control based conflict managements. The results confirmed that there is only a meaningful relationship between relationship-oriented leadership with solution-based conflict management. In other words, our survey indicates that when there is a conflict, management can handle the problem using his/her relationship and find appropriate solution to resolve any possible conflict.