STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT THOUGHT (MANAGEMENT THOUGHT)
Year:2011 | Volume:4 | Issue:2 (8)|Papers Count:8

Nowadays many countries pay attention to the role of image improvement to develop their tourism industry and through different cultural and political aspects of this phenomenon, try to use it to introduce their national image optimally. Recent researches have shown that national image is an effective index for evaluating the success of countries’ international policies and efforts. Different models of evaluating national images do so by using a set of factors including tourism, culture, cultural heritage, and people. This is another aspect of tourism potential in national image creation. In modern era, global media and intercultural communication are the main tools of creating national images. By concentrating on the Islamic Republic of Iran, we can see some remarkable advantages in tourism besides some weaknesses in benefiting from the major international media which has resulted in a weak national image of the country. This article wants to answer these two questions: 1) what is the relationship between tourism and national image? 2) What is the current status of tourism in creating Iran’s national image? The purpose is to offer a model of the relation between tourism and Iran’s national image. This research is of an investigatory kind which doesn’t require a hypothesis.

Undoubtedly to gain and maintain a positive external image and reputation, can be considered as one of the most important goals of all organizations. Today, many organizations are spending time, resources and effort to create an effective image of their organization or business; When an organization has a positive image, the audience, the stakeholders and customers, consider the behaviors and decisions issued by the organization and their experiences as positive, whereas if the same people or groups had in their mind a negative image of the organization, the organization's performance and behavior would be unrealistically considered under the influence of their negative perceptions. Because of the importance of the concept of organizational image for various organizations and institutions, this study has been conducted with two goals of "exploratory" and "hypothesis testing" and with a case study strategy. The data collection was done in three ways: library method, content analysis and survey. Finally for Imam Sadiq University, factors such as identity and culture of the university, the university graduates, students’ selection and admission process, characteristics and performance of different parts of the university, the university reputation and background, its physical environment and related symbols, the personnel’s contact with external clients, and media coverage of university news and events were identified as the most important factors influencing the image of the university.

The aim of this research is to explore and identify dimensions of organizational indifference and to provide a measure for assessing indifference levels in organizations for the first time in management community. By organizational indifference we mean a state of mind among employees that draws them to give priority to the material benefit they gain from the organization rather than the latter’s interest and success. To explore this state we interviewed 32 employees of the research organizations, advertising companies, schools, public organizations and universities. By analyzing qualitative data, we found five themes for organizational indifference as follows: indifference towards the manager, indifference towards the organization, indifference towards the clients, indifference towards the colleagues and indifference towards the job. We translated themes to variables and prepared a conceptual and operational framework (5 dimensions, 14 elements, and 33 indicators) for organizational indifference, and, for determining content validity, and sent it to 30 management consultants and experts. (Appendix A). At the second stage, for determining the construct validity of our measure, we established a correlation between this measure and three organizational standard measures, including "organizational commitment", "organizational turnover" and "organizational identity". The results confirm the construct of our measure.

In this study the objective is to examine and clarify how properly the country’s 30 provinces allocate the needed budget to various municipalities working under their jurisdiction, and then rank them accordingly.Necessary statistics was gathered for all these provinces and their related municipalities which were later classified on the basis of 14 distinctively relevant factors, namely: number of urban population, level of general literacy in the urban centers, the percentage of youth in the total population, average number of residents per household, per capita revenue earned, per capita tax paid, the percentage of people receiving financial support (under Emdad Committee), the length of available water distributing channels and pipes for each 1000 residents.The ratio of freeways to the total roads, also the ratio of major standard road to all available roads, the percentage of roads to all the working roads, the ratio of the length of each province total road to its total source area, the ratio of active libraries for every 10000 people and finally the number of art and cultural centers for each 10000 population.For weighting these numerous factors, we used a combined methodology including literature review, the opinion of our appraisers and then Shannon Entropy Method. Further, to rank these provinces in terms of their priority policy for allocating budget to the related municipalities, a combination of techniques was used by relying on SAW, TOPSIS and finally ELECTRE MODEL jointly.

This research derived from a PhD thesis under the same name, has been done to investigate the effective managerial and organizational factors on administrative-financial corruption in government organizations. Correlation method along with metrical approach is applied in this research. Reliability of the verified questionnaire is confirmed according to the primary study with Cronbach's alpha 0.9794 and validity of the questionnaire has been verified through content validity and factorial analysis. The sampling method is of judgment sampling type, so that questionnaires have been distributed among 934 relevant managers and experts of existent government organizations in Isfahan and Zanjan provinces. With due attention to the main objective of research by means of AMOS software, the amount of effective managerial and organizational factors on corruption in government organizations has been investigated through studying of casual relations among variables. Finally it shows that payment system, corruption's offences and rules, informal groups, transparency, informatics and accountability, administrative rules and regulations and psychological factors among organizational factors are recognized as nine determining factors from fourteen effective organizational factors. Managers' weakness in leadership and guidance, managers' weakness in supervision and control and managers' weakness in mobilizing resources and possibilities are recognized as three determining effective factors among five effective management factors in corruption.

This study at first attempts to introduce the concept of “Strategic Cost Management” as a new approach, and also as an effective method, and then it will try to examine the impact of its application on improving customer satisfaction in the IRAN Khodro Company.The main objective in this inquiry is to find out if using different cost management techniques in IRAN Khodro can improve its customer’s satisfaction and consequently can also enhance its market position.A literature survey on the topic of strategic cost management, and its undergoing techniques, was performed and the summary of its finding is presented in the first part of this paper. Then, the case of IRAN Khodro is fairly introduced, with all the necessary information for logical analysis and conclusions. However, the emphasis was first on the company’s strong policy for cost reduction (particularly reducing the cost of their main brand, SAMAND), and then also their priority for customer satisfaction based on two factors: “cost” and “value”.To do this, a proper questionnaire was designed and was distributed among two distinct groups of SAMAND Taxi owners (the first group’s car is made in the years 1384 and before, and the second group’s car in the years 1385 and after).These questionnaires, and the other related data, were gathered and analyzed by SPSS software. The results in brief indicate that the price of their cars (costs) have not been reduced as was expected and further, the level of customer value has also demonstrated a considerable decline over the period of the project.

The aim of this research is to determine the critical success factors of total quality management and their relative importance in a manufacturing firm. For this purpose, factors and sub-factors affecting quality of products are identified, the existing situation in terms of factors contribution to total quality is determined, and relative importance of individual Factors and sub-factors are decided. A focus group from top managers and experts in relevant departments were formed to identify and rank the factors based on Delphi technique. To determine the weight of each factor and its sub-factors, Group-Fuzzy–AHP was utilized. Inconsistency rates that were calculated for each table resulted in figures less than 0.1. The validity of the questionnaires used to evaluate the current position of the firm was confirmed through face validity, and a %97.1 for Cronbach's alpha indicated good reliability of the instrument. The result showed that, among factors and sub-factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the firm under study, teamwork, employees’ participation, and reward system have the highest impact on the firm’s achievement, and require the most attention for improvement respectively.