IRANIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
Year:2010 | Volume:5 | Issue:19|Papers Count:12

The purpose of this study is to examine the interaction between Iranian bureaucratic characteristics and the Society's cultural traits. Data was collected via questionnaire, semi- structured interviews and documents from four Iranian ministries. Findings show that the Iran's bureaucratic features of rule obedience, professionalism and merit, deviate from those of Weberian legal- rational ideal type. In addition, we found that the prior studies of the society's cultural traits will support the results. The findings of this research imply that the public administration of Iran has to take on a rigorous administrative reform in order to make public organizations more effective and competent. Otherwise, the society's vision toward its developmental goals will be at stake. It is assumed that a competent bureaucracy, in the long run will positively affect the cultural traits that are favorable for developmental goals.

If there doesn’t exist an appropriate relation between subject and method in entrepreneurship as a field of research it wouldn’t be able to educate its audience. Perhaps this has caused fundamental issues in the field of entrepreneurship studies which remain unresolved. This paper tends to describe the importance of entrepreneurship with regard to interpretive paradigms such as phenomenology, qualitative research strategies used as a method for understanding entrepreneurship as a whole. In other words, since the entrepreneurship is an integrated process of life experience and since life experience is too difficult to study; so many studies in this field have failed. To overcome this methodological problem this study intends to leave functionalism paradigm and instead use interpretive methods such as Phenomenology. Therefore, the first section introduces and describes the phenomenology approach as a research method. Then in the second section the focus is on methodological challenges in the field of entrepreneurship. In addition, the benefits of interpretive methods in the field are discussed. This paper is a response to the growing trend of entrepreneurship research that requires qualitative methods to generate descriptive and exploratory research in this academic domain.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate how Iranian companies perceive corporate social responsibility. After a review of the literature, Carroll’s framework was selected for the construction of a questionnaire which was sent to all companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. The analysis indicated that the perceptions of social responsibility among Iranian companies are closed to legal dimension in Carroll’s pyramid. Furthermore, the corporations first emphasize the economic aspect of social responsibility followed by moral, legal, and finally humanitarian dimension. The differences between manufacturing and service oriented companies as well as large vs. small organizations were identified. The analysis indicated that the manufacturing companies emphasize the legal and moral aspects of corporate social responsibility more than the service sector companies.

When a province encounters problems such as air pollution or destroyed buildings and houses as a result of natural disasters, more than one organization is involved in solving the problem. Solving this kind of problems needs high levels of coordination and communication of knowledge between organizations involved. Knowledge management as a systematic process of creating, distributing, and applying knowledge within the organization for the purpose of improving service quality is a useful means of decreasing confusion, costs, losses, and number of errors in such situations. In this paper different models of knowledge management maturity assessment and their critical success factors were reviewed. These models were then utilized to develop a framework for knowledge management maturity assessment at inter-organizational level. Critical success factors of this model were extracted and evaluated with Delfi method. A questionnaire was developed to assess the level of knowledge management maturity at inter-organizational level of a group of organizations involved in rebuilding Bam province.

In the current study the impact of organizational factors on academic entrepreneurship are investigated. Organizational factors that are examined in the research include; control systems, human resource management systems, leadership behavior, culture and structure. The sample includes 220 university professors with academic degree of trainer, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor in 2 universities in Shiraz including Payam-e-Noor University (PNU), and Islamic Azad University. The results of correlation analysis showed that the relationship between 5 organizational factors and academic entrepreneurship is positive. The results of regression analysis indicated that amongst organizational factors, structure had no predictive impact on academic entrepreneurship regardless of their positive relationship. Additionally, based on t values in standard regression, human resource management systems, culture and leadership behavior had a positive impact on academic entrepreneurship but, the structure and control systems had no positive impact on levels of academic entrepreneurship regardless of their positive impact with academic entrepreneurship in correlation analysis.

Work conflict is a major issue among nurses and conflict management requires emotion-based skills. Thus nurses need to learn to manage conflict effectively. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and conflict management styles among head nurses in Milad hospital. 55 head nurses of Milad hospital went through a quantitative study during the year 1388. Data was gathered by two 5-point Likert scale questionnaires. The questionnaire used for EI was "Sieber or Shrink" questionnaire with 84 percent reliability, and conflict management questionnaire was "Robbins" questionnaire with 81 percent reliability. Data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics, including mean, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression methods. Cooperation (mean = 11.85) and compromise (mean = 11.16) styles were the most prominent conflict-handling styles. EI was positively correlated with conflict management. Self-awareness and cooperation style were positively correlated. The results of the study show that nurses' EI influences their conflict management styles and that nurses prefer cooperation and compromise styles. Such studies can be useful for managers in order to improve human resource productivity in the organization.