PRODUCTIVITY MANAGEMENT (BEYOND MANAGEMENT)
Year:2013 | Volume:7 | Issue:25|Papers Count:8

The present research has been carried out to identify the factors inhibiting the establishment of meritocracy at the level of professional managers of governmental organizations in the city of Ahwaz. To do this, the researchers have addressed three questions. The first question tries to discover the factors preventing the establishment of meritocracy. The second question seeks to rate the inhibitory factors according to their importance. And finally, the third question tries to determine the structural relations between the preventing factors and meritocracy system. Based on the research methodology, the exploratory factor analysis has been applied for the statistical population (N=10377), and through the use of Morgan’s Sampling Table, a sample of 384 has been chosen. Also, for data analysis, a researcher-designed questionnaire has been utilized in two parts. The first part to identify the degree of meritocracy establishment and the second part to recognize the factors inhibiting the establishment of meritocracy. The reliability of the questionnaires, based on Cronbach’s alpha has been 0.93 and 0.83, respectively. The collected data have been analyzed by using the statistical software spss and other tools in descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings have led to the conclusion that nepotism, inequality of opportunities, and superficiality are the three preventing factors. Also, it can be concluded that nepotism is ranked first, inequality of opportunities the second, and superficiality the third from the viewpoint of importance. Finally, the results showed that there is a statistically significant relation between the inhibitory factors and meritocracy establishment.

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between managers' cultural intelligence and productivity of Maskan Bank branches in Urumia. The research method was a descriptive correlation. The statistical population of the research includes the managers and staff of the Maskan Bank branches in Urumia, the number of which is 17. Since the statistical population is limited, all the population will be considered as the sample size. For each manager four employees were selected. For data collection, two forms of questionnaires, namely cultural intelligence and productivity, were used. For analyzing the data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used.The findings show that there is a significant and positive relationship between managers' cultural intelligence, and its component (Meta-cognitive, Cognitive, Motivational, and Behavioral) with the productivity of the Maskan Bank branches.

This paper aims to identify the barriers of improving the productivity in public sector. According to the theoretical studies and the interviews with several senior managers of public sector, 28 items were detected as the obstacles of improving the productivity in public sector. These items were classified under three categories of environmental, organizational and individual barriers based on Ammons’ studies. Then a questionnaire was developed in order to reveal the views of managers in public sector about the influence of each item on productivity. The findings show that the public sector is faced with numerous barriers in improving productivity, a major part of which is related to personality, attitude and leadership skills of the public sector managers. The other part of it relates to the internal and environmental problems such as lack of a proper appraisal system, tendency to keep the status quo and extreme conservatism, lack of accountability system, lack of cost accounting systems, the political pressures that influence decisions, low importance of the issue of productivity compared with the political interests, shortage of analyst staff, lack of competitive market pressures, and the complex process of bureaucracy.

With regard to the importance of productivity and considering the organizational variables that can affect the productivity, or lack of productivity, of on organization, various studies have been carried out. In an organization, the study of the quality of the employees’ working life is one of the components affecting the productivity of that organization. Therefore, due to the importance of the issue at hand in Saman Sanat parts producing company in West Azerbaijan Province, the researchers proceeded to do the research. Out of a total of 210 members of the personnel, 136 were selected as the sample through the use of Korsei and Morgan’s table. For data collection, two standard questionnaires, working life quality and productivity questionnaires, were used. The Cron bach value for the questionnaires was 0.98 and 0.86, respectively. Also, based on the dimensions of working life quality, eight hypotheses were posed, seven of which were confirmed following the information output and data analysis. However, the sixth hypothesis was rejected. Therefore, apart from the lake of relation between productivity and the balance of life and work, in all other dimensions, there is a significant relation between productivity and working life quality of the employees of Saman Sanat Parts Producing Company in West Azerbaijan Province.

The main objective of this study is to investigate value engineering and its impact on the dimensions of organizational performance in the Water and Wastewater Administration of West Azerbaijan Province and present guidelines for the successful implementation of value engineering in order to enhance organizational performance in the mentioned office. The theoretical framework of the research is based on S.Iyer’s value engineering operational model as well as Kaplan and Norton’s operational model of organizational performance. In the regard, one main hypothesis and four minor hypotheses have been put forward. The statistical population consists of 375 staff members of the Water and Wastewater Administration of West Azerbaijan Province, from among whom a sample of 190 was selected through the use of Cochran’s formula and stratified random sampling technique. The measurement tool is a questionnaire, which was distributed among the subject. Before testing the hypotheses, the researchers used Kolmogorov-Smirnov test in order to evaluate the normal distribution of the variables. The results showed that the variables of value engineering and organizational performance do not have a significant difference from the normal distribution. Thus, for data analysis within the parametric statistics frame, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and linear regression were used. The results indicated that about 0.287 of the changes in the dependent variable (organizational performance) and its four dimensions (personnel satisfaction, customer satisfaction, organizational effectiveness, and financial results of the market) are accounted for by the changes in the independent variable (value engineering), which is also the indicator of the positive and direct relationship between the two variables.

The impact of Information and communication technology to increase financial transactions in different fields shows the Positive developments of this industry in Iran. But could the ICT industry also be efficient in the economic capital of the country? Does the industry that appeared with the nature of contributing to convey and analyze the information has informational efficiency itself? In this study, the ICT industry in the Tehran Stock Exchange was surveyed to check its informational efficiency. The data and documents related to the profitability of companies in this industry for 6 years were studied quantitatively. A total of eight companies with the nature of ICT were selected. To understand the informational efficiency, runs test have been used with two approaches: runs with change relative to the average. The results showed that the ICT industry in Tehran stock exchange has not even a weak level of informational efficiency. The results are completely inconsistent with other countries and show that Iran's ICT condition needs a fundamental reflection.

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the psychological characteristics and entrepreneurship of the undergraduate students of Industrial Management in Tabriz Branch of Islamic Azad University. The statistical population includes the students of Industrial Management who entered Tabriz Branch during the academic years 2009-2011, from among whom 165 students were selected as the research sample. The data collection tool is the general questionnaire of tendency toward business, and the data analysis tool is Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The study consists of 5main hypotheses. The results showed that there is a relationship between personality traits and psychological characteristics with the students’ entrepreneurship and that it contributes to predict students’ tendency toward entrepreneurship.

This research attempts to measure the service quality and investigate the relationship between service quality and market share of Saderat Bank of Iran in Tabriz city. For this purpose, SERVQUAL model has been used which is the most reliable instrument to indicate and analyze the gaps between customers’ expectation and perception of their received banking services. To make our research more appropriate, “accessibility” was added as the service quality’s sixth dimension. So the quality of Saderat Bank of Iran services was measured through six dimensions: tangibles factors, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and accessibility. In this correlation research, 440 of Saderat Bank’s customers were selected by cluster random sampling and were administered by SERVQUAL questionnaire. Finally 400 questionnaires were correctly filled and data analyzing procedure started. The data were analyzed by descriptive analysis methods, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, correlated group T coefficient and multiple regressions. The findings of this research indicated that there was a significant difference between customers’ expectation and their perception in all of the service dimensions except reliability. Also there was a positive correlation between reliability, responsiveness and assurance with market share, and finally reliability was the most important predictor of Saderat Bank’s market share.