DIDGAH
Year:2011 | Volume:- | Issue:-|Papers Count:5

In the quest for organizational success, continuous improvement is desired in all organizations. Regardless of their activity (i.e. producing goods or services), all organizations seek to achieve higher output performance.This is the reason many organizational decision-makers concentrate on the quantity of output by producing more goods or services rather than focusing on the effectiveness of their organizations to improve the quality of output.In other words, Organizational Effectiveness (OE), which may be ignored by many organizations, can be a decisive factor in achieving a better performance.This paper studies the benefits of regular OE assessment in Port and Maritime Organization of Iran (PMO), since it is the main Iranian maritime organization. The results obtained from the survey study on PMO can be use for OE improvement. Improving organizational performance via regular OE can expand the country's international market access and lead directly to increased trade and, through this, to higher income.

In this modern world, transportation plays a vital role in the world economy and marine transportation with handling about 90 percent of world trade has the most important position among the other transportation modes.There are more than 6500 ports and oil and non-oil terminals in the world and it leads to an intense competition in the international level. In this regard, most of the nations seek to qualitative and quantitative improvement of the services alongside the environmental protection and sustainable development. In this context, to move toward the international standards and to achieve the sustainable development, Iranian Ports and Maritime Organization has placed the implementation of global systems like Integrated Management System (ISO 9001), Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSAS 18001), and Environmental Management System (ISO 14001) on its agenda. Using the implementation process of integrated management system and emphasizing on the Environmental Management System (ISO 14001), this paper tries to identify and evaluate environmental aspects of port activities as well as control measures to reduce or eliminate environmental problems and finally, it tries to improve environmental indexes in the sea and land. This paper also evaluates the results of the 5 year implementation of IMS.

This paper tries to review the national and international reactive strategies to piracy. Today, threats of the pirates become a major concern for shipping society. International agencies and organizations react to this phenomenon by taking various measures. Actions of multinational military forces, intervention convention and anti-piracy actions are some of the issues presented in this paper. Generally, piracy is not a new phenomenon, but nowadays it becomes a big concern for the Aden Gulf, Red Sea, and the East of Somalia. Due to the internal problems of Somalia, Somali piracy turned to a serious threat for commercial shipping. In this regard, Iranian ships have faced some problems like threats and hostage; but with the Iranian navy military intervention, some of these threats have failed.

In the context of maritime activities, "Professional Training" is very important to the beneficiaries of maritime activities - like marine transportation companies as well as owners. These trainings show the preference of training on teaching.In the other hand, issues like necessity of the meeting the needs of the workplace (ships) for hiring professional mariners and strengthening the methods lead to the increase of work period of them as well as improving the quality, being up to date, functionality the theoretical basics and establishing new theories for planning mariners' training courses have turned to a reasonable need.Nowadays, turning to the professional training and keeping away from academic training become a dilemma. It should also be noted that consistency of professional training with work conditions and strategies of mariners is one the ideas that support professional training.Finally, finding a suitable method for professional training of mariners requires understanding the theoretical basics, needs of the beneficiary institutions, demands of managers of beneficiary companies, owners, and marine transportation operators.

In the current years, Caspian region has turned to one of the most important strategic nodes; so, it is the focus center of regional powers and superpower countries. Oil resources of this region has added to the its geopolitical importance and made it a center for political and economical activities. In the near future, this region will become one of the most important crude exporters, but it depends on the legal regime of this region.Disagreement on the legal regime of Caspian region has always been a complex factor and resulted in irrational distribution of its resources.Experts of U.S. Energy Department have estimated that Caspian region enjoys of 200 million oil barrels (about 16% of global resources) and about 80% of Sturgeon (Caviar Fish) of the world. Oil is available all over the world, but Caviar is only available in the Caspian Sea. Although the Legal Regime of the Caspian Sea and Iran's interest in this region was subject to the political issues, but it has some rules and regulation which are in accordance with international agreement and conventions on lakes and joint seas. Because it is very rare to change the legal regime of a closed sea from bilateral to the five-sided regime, it is very essential to evaluate this issue.Islamic Republic of Iran has established working groups that consist of senior experts in legal issues to investigate and evaluate this legal regime and to provide acceptable documents in international communities in order to prove its claims.