Abstract: This paper studies the effective of family life education (FLE) on marital status among women attending in Isfahan counseling centers. The methodology of this research was quasi experimental with pre-test and post-test design and control group. Statistical populations were women attending in Isfahan city counseling centers. For selecting statistical sample, 30 women from women attending in counseling centers were selected as volunteers and randomly distributed between experimental and control groups. The main hypothesis of this research states that FLE increases marital satisfaction and their subscales in women. In this study, the dependent variable was marital-satisfaction and the independent variable was family life education conducted to case group in 10 sessions. The results of this survey show that the FLE improved marital satisfaction (p<0.01) and it was effective on the subscales (p<0.01).

Abstract: Knowledge plays an essential role on creating value added business units in today’s competitive environment. In this paper, we perform a study to investigate the relationship between knowledge management and organization culture in an Iranian PVC industry. The proposed study selects a sample of 65 people and distributes a questionnaire among them. The study investigates the relationship between knowledge management and four organizational cultures’ components including mission, consistency, involvement and adaptability. Using Denison model and implementation of Pearson correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression techniques, we analyze four hypotheses of the survey. The results of the study confirm that there are strong relationships between knowledge management from one side and mission, consistency, involvement and adaptability.

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of ethical climate on turnover intentions and organizational performance based on the implementation of various techniques. The interview method was used to identify the factors of input and output. Required data were collected to measure performance of firms based on some documents. The survey method was used to study the ethical climate and turnover intentions. The impact of ethical climate on turnover intentions and organizational performance was evaluated. The information was analyzed based on different software packages including Deap2.1, SPSS.18 (PASW) and Lisrel 8.1. The preliminary results indicate that organizational ethical climate positively impacts on sales representative performance and negatively influences on turnover Intentions. The highest positively correlations were between sales practices and organizational performance (r=0.48) and the highest negatively correlations were between sales practices and turnover intentions(r=-0.72).

Abstract: Developing economy needs appropriate infrastructure in different areas including electronic banking. This paper presents an empirical investigation on important factors influencing electronic banking for developing exports in Iran. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 200 regular customers who use banking services of various banks in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.752 and there are five factors including internet infrastructure, advanced services, usability and information design. The most important sub-criteria include building required culture, customer awareness, the role of government, internet knowledge and compatibility with internet technology.

Abstract: An increase on competition industry from one side and the need for customer retention on the other side in banking industry create necessary motivation to learn more about customer behavior. This paper investigated the relationship between seven perspectives of banking services and customers’ attitude towards changing behavior. The seven perspectives included how bank employees’ treat customers, service prices, how to promote and market synergies, place and time to serve customers, products, equipment and process. The proposed study was implemented in two Iranian banks called Mellat and Tejarat in city of Tehran, Iran. The results indicated that all components except one case, which was “how to promote and market synergies” had meaningful and negative relationship with customer behavior.

Abstract: This paper presents a logistic regression model to measure risk management of receivable accounts on some selected firms from drug industry listed on Tehran Stock Exchange. The proposed study of this paper considers the effects of different variables such as current ratio, quick ratio, working capital on total assets and cash flow on economic value added. We gather the necessary information of 29 firms over the period 2006-2011. The results of our survey indicate that the proposed model of this paper is capable of forecasting high profit firms with a probability of 87.5%, 58.62% is the likelihood of predicting less profitable firms and on average, the firm could forecast profitable firms for 75.54%, successfully.

Abstract: Many firms try to optimize their supply and production levels separately, but this method could limit influence profitability, negatively. Thus, it is becoming more important to analyze these two levels, simultaneously. In this paper, an integrated supply-production planning is considered, simultaneously. We develop a mathematical model, which calculates the optimal inventory lot sizing for each supplier and minimizes the total cost associated with the process of procuring raw material, transferring and holding raw materials and manufacturing. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear programming and heuristic genetic algorithm (GA) method is developed to solve the resulted problem. We examine the performance of the proposed model for a case study conducted in Iran. Experimental results show that such a model can reduce the costs of the case study, substantially.

Abstract: Organizational structure is one of the most important components of any firm and it plays essential role on building successful business units. Organizational structure in cooperative organizations may influence productivity of such organizations, significantly. In this paper, we consider the relationship between various components including formality, complexity, concentration on performance measurement in cooperative organizations in province of Qom, Iran. The study selects 280 firms out of 1069 cooperative organizations and using Pearson correlation test examines different hypotheses. Based on the results of our survey, formality and concentration have positive impacts on the success of cooperative organizations but the impact of complexity on performance of organization is not confirmed.

Abstract: During the past few years, there have been tremendous efforts on developing remote working among women in an attempt to help females take care of their family related responsibilities. In this paper, we study the impact of remote working on quality of services in central office of Tehran municipality of Iran. The proposed study designs a standard questionnaire to survey remote working and using an existing standard SERVQUAL questionnaire measure the level of quality of work because of remote working. The survey indicates that women who participated in remote working program were satisfied from this program in terms of personal, social as well as organizational productivity. Remote workers were highly satisfied from financial advantage of this program. Managers were, however, highly satisfied from the results of their female’s remote working. In our survey, remote contract workers were more satisfied than remote formal workers were. The surveyed people believed organizational structure was the most important challenge for remote working followed by economical, personal and social issues. The results of SERVQUAL also indicate there were some meaningful relationship between remote working and quality of work.

Abstract: Financial statements are considered as primary sources of information for most investors to make investment decisions. A crystal clear and comprehensive annual report helps many interested parties about the performance of any business unit. However, many rules and regulations ask management teams of organizations to provide quarterly financial results. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to study the effects of quarterly financial reports on three ratios including systematic risk, return on assets and firm size. The proposed study gathers the necessary data from 72 firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2000-2006. The study determined the performances of these 72 firms before and after the releases of three quarterly reports and using Freedman test determined whether there were any meaningful differences between two groups of data or not. The results of Freedman test indicate that there were not any meaningful differences between stock performance and systematic risk before and after quarterly results. The survey also examines the relationship between systematic risk and size of firms using Pearson correlation test and the results indicate there were some meaningful differences size and systematic risk.

Abstract: Internet marketing plays an important role on profitability of organizations, it can build a bridge between customers and business owners and anyone could purchase products and services through internet. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing internet marketing on Iranian food industry, named Shahrvand. The proposed study selects 280 out of 1040 managers who were involved in this industry during the year of 2012. Structural equation modeling has been performed to detect important factors including internal/external factors, ease of use and electronic marketing. Cronbach alphas have been calculated for these four items were mostly above 0.80, which validated the overall questionnaire of the survey. The results indicate that among internal factors, knowledge management, organizational culture and resources influence on acceptance of internet marketing, while these factors do not show any meaningful impact on ease of use. In addition, external factors including trend on market growth, competition and infrastructure influence on ease of use and acceptance of internet marketing but infrastructure and competition do not impact on ease of internet marketing.

Abstract: Present study investigates the effect of workplace spirituality on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior by considering the role of spiritual intelligence. To measure the concepts of workplace spirituality, customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior (CO-OCB) and spiritual intelligence, the conceptualizations are applied on 282 employees of an insurance company in Tehran during the fiscal year of 2011 and the results are analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that spiritual intelligence and workplace spirituality have positive impact on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior. However, when spiritual intelligence is considered as a moderating factor, spirituality development in workplace cannot alone influence on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior since including spiritual intelligence hedges the effect of workplace spirituality on customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior though workplace spirituality can improve customer–oriented organizational citizenship behavior through impacting on spiritual intelligence.

Abstract: Managing an organization under chaos and uncertainty is often a concern of academic society. These days, we may face unpleasant natural, economical or even political incidents where mangers need to handle them, properly. This paper presents an empirical survey to investigate on an electromotor maker when it faces different chaos. The proposed study uses balanced scorecard in terms of four different perspectives including internal process, learning and growth, customer and financial performances. For each perspective, the proposed study uses analytical hierarchy process to rank different sub-criteria. Based on the results of our survey profit margin is the most important item followed by profit capability and brand name while productivity and sales force performance were the least important items.

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the performance of a mining firm in province of Semnan, Iran based on balanced scorecard (BSC). The proposed study investigates the present status of the case study in terms of four BSC perspectives including internal process, learning and growth, customer and financial figures. The firm uses BSC for one year and after that, we compared the performance of the firm prior and after BSC implementation. The preliminary results indicate that the firm was able to make a 30% improvement on its performance after one-year implementation of BSC. In other words, the firm was able to make 59% improvement on learning and growth, 33% growth on internal process, 32% growth on customer and 21% improvement on financial figures.

Abstract: Worry exposure (WE) is a core of cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The present study was carried out to examine the efficacy of WE in treating patients with GAD. Three patients with GAD were selected using Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) based on disorders axis I. Subjects were selected using purposeful sampling, and underwent the treatment after gaining treatment needs. Multiple baseline experimental single case study was used as the method of the present study. The treatment program was carried out for 8 weekly sessions, with a follow up period of 3 months later treatment ending. Subjects completed Pennsylvania State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (CAQ). Research findings represented that WE decreased the intensity of GAD symptoms: Pathologic worry and cognitive avoidance. WE has suitable efficacy in treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder and it maintains suitable efficacy in treating GAD.

Abstract: In today's competitive business environment, consumers are exposed to make their choice from different alternatives. Customer loyalty has never been an easy task and many business owners may lose their customer as soon as new products appear on the market. This paper presents a study to find important factors influencing on sales force using factor analysis. The proposed study designed a questionnaire and distributed among 180 customers of a well-known food chain named Shahrvand in different regions in city of Tehran, Iran and managed to collect 156 filled ones. The questionnaire consists of 68 questions Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.847, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of our survey indicate that five major factors including multi-sensory brand experience, brand engagement, pleasing brand, brand communications and brand effectiveness influence brand loyalty, significantly.

Abstract: In today's competitive business environment, consumers are exposed to make their choice from different alternatives. Customer loyalty has never been an easy task and many business owners may lose their customer as soon as new products appear on the market. This paper presents a study to find important factors influencing on sales force using factor analysis. The proposed study designed a questionnaire and distributed among 180 customers of a well-known food chain named Shahrvand in different regions in city of Tehran, Iran and managed to collect 156 filled ones. The questionnaire consists of 68 questions Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.847, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of our survey indicate that five major factors including.

Abstract: This study investigates the impact of earnings management on operating cash flows management over the period 2004-2011 using the information of 119 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Results indicate that there is a meaningful relationship between earnings management and operating cash flows management. In other words, earnings management creates and shapes operating cash flows management. In addition, after controlling for the loss reporting, firm size and firm's financial risk, the results show that there was a relationship between loss reporting and firm size with the cash flows management. When firms report loss, then operating cash flows increases. Finally, operating cash flows decreases when firm size increases. However, our survey does not provide any evidence to believe there is any relationship between financial risk and cash flows management.

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of debt, firm size and liquidity on internal resources as well as investment expenses on 140 selected firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2006-2010. The survey has performed based on panel data analysis and the proposed model uses Husman model chooses random effect as well as fixed effect to analyze the data. The results indicate that there was a positive relationship between firms’ debt and sensitivity of investment-cash flow. There are also some positive and meaningful relationship between firms’ size and liquidity on one side and sensitivity of investment-cash flow.

Abstract: Office automation systems play important role on increasing productivity and efficiency of organizations. An automated system is capable of improving required communications, speed up the process of tasks and removes unnecessary activities. This paper presents an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing on inefficiency of office automation systems in ministry of science, research and technology of Iran. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among management team who work for this organization. The results of our investigation indicate that two factors, lack of necessary infrastructure for participating in office automation activities as well as lack of management support, play important role on reaching desirable results. In addition, educational background and work experience also influence office automation systems’ applicability.

Abstract: This paper evaluates the outsourcing procedures' conformity of E-banking services in some Iranian private banks according to the OMBOK structure. The insight on the outsourcing as a supportive source for the strategies of an organization is increasing and outsourcing is not being looked at as an element for reducing the organization's costs anymore. Therefore, there is an increasing trend in banking sector towards employing the outsourcing, as an effective response to the environment and attracting customers. This paper attempt to find out how outsourcing procedures of e-baking services in private banks is corresponded with the framework of this standard. The study considers five primary dimensions consisting of infrastructure, operation management, business, customer relations and technology among private banks across the country based on OMBOK model. The study selects 90 experts out of 100 people in the field of E-banking as sample study and distributes some questionnaires among them and the questionnaire is analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis test. According to the achieved results, out of the five domains of OMBOK structure including infrastructure, business, technology, customer relations and operation management, the outsourcing procedures of the e-banking services in Iran's private banks does not correspond in two domains of infrastructure and business, but corresponded in other domains.

Abstract: The rapid growth of the web and the lack of structure or an integrated schema create various issues to access the information for users. All users’ access on web information are saved in the related server log files. The circumstance of using these files is implemented as a resource for finding some patterns of user's behavior. Web mining is a subset of data mining and it means the mining of the related data from WWW, which is categorized into three parts including web content mining, web structure mining and web usage mining, based on the part of data, which is mined. It seems necessary to have a technique, which is capable of learning the users’ interests and based on the interests, which could filter the unrelated interests automatically or it could offer the related information to the user in reasonable amount of time. The web usage mining makes a profile from users to recognize them and it has direct relationship to web personalizing. The primary objective of personalizing systems is to prepare the thing, which is required by users, without asking them explicitly. In the other way, formal models prepare the possibility of system’s behavior modeling. The Petri and queue nets as some samples of these models can analyze the user's behavior in web. The primary objective of this paper is to present a colored Petri net to model the user's interactions for offering a list of pages recommendation to them in web. Estimating the user's behavior is implemented in some cases like offering the proper pages to continue the browse in web, ecommerce and targeted advertising. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed method is able to improve the accuracy criterion 8.3% rather static method.

Abstract: The purpose of the present study is to prioritized different methods for making necessary change on the administrative system of the central state Welfare Organization in Iran. The proposed model of this paper uses descriptive and measuring approach based on 11 questionnaires, which include criteria and necessary options to change the administrative system. The proposed model selects the sample size from different management levels, human capital development assistance, top, middle, and operational mangers of central state Welfare organization. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique is used to perform pairwise comparisons and Expert Choice is implemented to analyze the information. The results indicate that structure and process correction are the primary requirements for systematic changing. Weight of mentioned index is 0. 203 and the Compatibility Rating of changing criterion is equal to 0.06.

Abstract: This paper evaluates the effect of profit quality structures on capital cost and the primary objective is to disclose the effect to investors. The research methodology is practical based on its goal and its research design is Expose-Facto. The study selects 36 Iranian firms as statistical sample over the period 2006-2010 from some Iranian firms and the study selects post performances from their financial reports. The statistical parameters, statistical plots, multiple-variables linear-regression and correlation analysis are implemented for data analysis. The results show that the estimated model could explain 22 percentages of variable changes. This means that there is a weak linear relationship between cost of capital and profit persistence, profit predictability and other variables. Based on the regression estimation we concluded that there was a direct relationship between earnings persistence and cost of capital and there was a reverse relationship between earnings predictability and cost of capital.

Abstract: Experiences of developed countries and various studies in the context of economic growth of developing countries have shown that economic growth is not only explained by physical capital and labor force but also, and more importantly, by human capital. The later variable should be entered, as a major determinant, in the endogenous growth model. With the concern of important role of human capital in this research, the primary objective of this paper is to explore the effect of gender discrimination of human capital on economic growth and factor productivity in Iran and the selected OECD countries. More specifically, to indicate the economic capability of educated females, we use data of the considered countries over the period 1974-2008, to estimate the relevant models of growth and productivity. The implication is to compare the empirical results obtained for Iran and the selected developed countries.

Abstract: Culture is the soul of an organization, which can cause advance or retrogress of the organization. This paper investigates the role of organizational culture on improvement and effectiveness of organizations. We identify and recognize the role of important components of organizational culture in effectiveness of professional ethics within organizations. The results show that there was a meaningful relationship between organizational interest and commitment, enhancement of stability and compatibility, teamwork moral, giving identity to the staff and the quality of professional ethics. The results obtained from the data analysis also indicate that organizational culture deeply affects the employees' behavior of an organization.

Abstract: Productivity improvement plays essential role on cost reduction and production planning in many organizations. There are literally various methods for measuring productivity and improving systems’ capabilities such as total quality management, 5S, etc. In this paper, we perform an empirical investigation to find out whether implementing 5S could reduce interruptions in production systems in one of pipe and profile manufacturing units located in province of Semnan, Iran. The proposed study compares the mean and standard deviations of waste materials before and after the implementation of 5-S in three different lines and statistical tests indicate that 5-S have made the necessary change on production planning and it could reduce waste materials, significantly.

Abstract: One of the important issues in port services is to evaluate the performance of the services. Without evaluating port services and their related components, these services cannot be considered desirable and its quality cannot be enhanced. However, the evaluation and the quality assurance of port services should be accomplished based on a scientific framework and a coherent framework to have desirable results. The importance-performance analysis model is an appropriate framework where each component is evaluated in terms of two dimensions of importance and performance. This study performs performance-importance analysis of ports’ services quality form perspective of containerized liner shipping in the Imam Khomeini port. In this exploratory study, 150 shipping lines experts are chosen, randomly in 2012. The study identifies 28 components of quality in port services and shipping lines’ experts are requested to evaluate these components in terms of two dimensions of importance and performance. Results reveal that there is a gap between the importance and performance of all port services components except three components of 6, 19 and 24. In addition, the results indicate that Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) model is capable of evaluating and assuring quality in port services and can precisely identify the strengths and weaknesses of the seaport system and provide guidance for strategy formulation for quality improvement.

Abstract: This paper considers different approaches for establishment of change management in governmental agencies. The proposed model of this paper uses Kotter’s 8-step method in an empirical investigation for a gas distribution firm located in province of Esfahan, Iran. The results of this study reveal that the organization was successful to create sense of urgency, form a powerful coalition, create a vision for change, communicate the vision, create short-term wins and build on the change. However, the organization was not successful on removing obstacles and changes in corporate culture. In addition, the sixth step, create short -term wins, receives the highest rate of success while removing the obstacles maintains the minimum rate of success. Finally, the survey demonstrates that gender and educational background do not have any impact on change management but age, job experience as well as job position influences change management, significantly.

Abstract: This performs an empirical investigation to evaluate the relationship between cultural values and earnings quality in some Iranian banks over the period 2005-2011. The individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity dimensions are regarded as criteria for cultural values. The study also considers change in return on assets and loan loss provisions as the main criteria for earnings quality of banks. For measuring the cultural values, the questionnaire of Hofstede [Hofstede, G. (1994). The business of international business is culture. International business review, 3(1), 1-14.]. The study also uses two measures to calculate earnings quality: 1-just-meet-or-beat the prior year’s earnings and 2- Income smoothing through loan loss provisions based on compound linear regression. Research results showed that there was a weak relationship between cultural values and earnings management.

Abstract: Having appropriate technology is an important managerial decision in today’s manufacturing industry and to choose a good technology, we need to consider various alternatives. In other words, when we intend to purchase a technology, we need to go beyond price as a primary criterion and look for other important factors such as technical support, quality, powers, etc. In this paper, we present two methods including preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to rank different manufacturing facilities based on various criteria including price, weight, power, etc. and analyze the results. The proposed study of this paper considers six criteria including price, weight, power, spindle, diameter and stroke for selection of a manufacturing equipment. The results of our survey have shown that diameter and weight are number priority for ranking different alternatives.

Abstract: This study analyzes the determinants of non audit-fees for a sample of 67 French companies belonging to the SBF 120 index during the period 2005-2007. Our attention focused on the influence of shareholder / creditor agency costs - namely debts and investment opportunities. Based on panel regression methodology, our results reveal that the affiliation of the auditor to an international network, the presence of an audit committee, the debt, the size of the company and the closing date have an effect on non-audit fees. However, investment opportunities do not affect the amount of non-audit fees.

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing on electronic banking adoption using factor analysis. The proposed study designed a questionnaire, distributed among 210 customers who were regular customers of four banks in city of Tehran, Iran named Saderat, Eghtesad Novin, Melli and Mellat. The questionnaire consists of 42 questions and since factor analysis is sensitive on skewness of data, we have decided to remove some of the questions and summarize it into 17 questions. Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.80, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of our survey indicate that four major factors including consistency, facilities, cost control and feasibility.

Abstract: Human resources are considered as one of the key components of any organization to reach its objectives. Human resources help organization performance doing organizational duties and making employees’ improvement. Because of this, employee performance appraisal has changed to one of the most important issues for top managers. Performance appraisal is necessary to select useful strategies for increasing productivity of human resource management along with productivity of employee to get strategic targets. In this study, we extract effective factors on increasing of employee performance and subsequently, present some suggestions to managers of academic organizations. The study was performed on some employees who worked for Islamic Azad University in 2013. Cronbach alpha was equal to 99.4% for employee performance appraisal, which confirmed the overall survey. To recognize key factors we used path analysis technique too. The results of the study revealed that in this school, employee performance in practical field was higher than expected, but in terms of operational and behavioral fields, they were in the middle stage.

Abstract: Managing empty containers in shipping industry plays an important role to increase the profitability on marine shipping industry. This paper presents an empirical investigation to detect influential factors in container transportation and estimates the value of empty containers transportation. The study also evaluates and compares different strategies employed to reduce the charge of empty container transportation. By selecting three major passages including Trans-pacific, trans-Atlantic and Europe-Asia and considering the balance in transportation network, regardless of the origin of shipping companies, an optimistic estimation of empty container transportation would be possible; therefore, empty container transportation could be explained, quantitatively. Furthermore, since shipping companies organize the movement of containers in various routes, four different strategies are also proposed.

Abstract: Operational auditing is one of the management consultancy services whose significance is on the rise day by day. This approach is, clearly, a systematic and methodical process used to evaluate economic savings of financial processes in organizations and the results of the evaluations are reported to interested people along with some comments to improve operational processes. Accordingly, it appears that the proper employment of the existing rationale in operational auditing can be a significant step towards the improvement of financial efficiency in Iranian public and private banking sector. This paper studies the effects of operational auditing on the improvement of economic saving of financial processes in Iranian private banks compared with traditional approaches where the operations are based on financial statements. The population of this survey includes 15 private and public Iranian banks and the proposed study selects 78 branches, randomly. The Cronbach alpha was used to test the reliability a questionnaire employed to collect the needed data in this study. The results obtained by SPSS Software indicated that the reliability of the instruments\ranged between 0.752 and 0.867, suggesting an acceptable level of the reliability for the questionnaire. Besides, content validity was used to confirm the validity of the instrument. The results of the study indicated that the operational auditing as a useful approach influencing the financial efficiency of public and private banks has significantly transformed the traditional thinking in the field of management auditing. The operational auditing has a number of significant advantages including a better method of controlling financial operations within Iranian banks, efficient planning in the future, facilitating efficient, appropriate, and accurate management decision making, and sound evaluation of managers’ financial operations.

Abstract: This paper presents a social work study to measure the impact of various cultural factors on consumerism in city of Esfahan, Iran. The proposed study uses clustering technique to choose a sample of 300 families out of 70,000 residences of this city. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among participants. Cronbach alpha have been calculated as 0.85 and 0.92 for cultural factors and consumerism, respectively. The results of Pearson correlation ratios indicate that there are statistically meaningful relationships between consumerism and four components of culture including religious believes, tendency to luxuries, using different multi medias and adherence to traditions.

Abstract: Having reliable and skilled employees are essential component of any organization. Employees are considered as intangible assets for most organizations and they are the primary source of making value added decisions. On the other hand, a learning organization is capable of making continuous improvement and survives in today’s competitive environment. The proposed study of this paper considers whether training programs could empower employees who were working as managers for Saipa Group Company, a well-known automaker in Iran. The study concentrates on those employees who participated in master program in one of educational organizations in city of Tehran, Iran. 178 managers attended this program representing approximately 70% of total managers. The results of our survey have indicated that while training programs have created meaningful sense and help them have a better sense of efficacy it has not created any feeling of competence or building feeling of self-organization. The survey also concluded that training programs could increase the level of meaningful sense and the feeling of competence. In addition, the results indicate that training programs could increase employees’ self-organization as well as efficacy characteristics.

Abstract: This paper presents an integrated supplier selection and inventory management using grey relationship model (GRM) as well as multi-objective decision making process. The proposed model of this paper first ranks different suppliers based on GRM technique and then determines the optimum level of inventory by considering different objectives. To show the implementation of the proposed model, we use some benchmark data presented by Talluri and Baker [Talluri, S., & Baker, R. C. (2002). A multi-phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design. European Journal of Operational Research, 141(3), 544-558.]. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model of this paper is capable of handling different criteria for supplier selection.

Abstract: Paradigms are some principles and assumptions, which define frameworks and research priorities in each discipline. Many believe that operational research (OR) is not a science and like many other sciences does not have any paradigm. However, since OR is committed to scientific methods, therefore it contains a methodological paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to consider theoretical methodologies in the field of OR. This paper performs a review on the existing literature based on interpretive hermeneutic approach. Based on literature review, the study determines four principles and assumptions for each OR paradigms and a classification of the methods are presented. The results show that OR has four main paradigms and there are many methods in OR fields to tackle a particular problem where each problem belongs to a particular paradigm. In addition, instead of using a particular method in problem situations, we can implement a combination of methodologies.