JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT & EVALUATION
Year:2011 | Volume:20 | Issue:63|Papers Count:7

Nowadays, organizations have concluded that no other resource than knowledge can situate them most desirably in this competitive world. Therefore, more than any other factor, the spotlight has turned upon employees as the owners of knowledge. Also ‘knowledge management’ as a tool which can accumulate the existing knowledge, organize it, make it dynamic, and disseminate it in the whole organization, has taken on a new significance. But, what matters is the way other dimensions interact, in terms of influence, with the knowledge management. This article studied the effect as well as the relationship between cybernetics – which includes six main dimensions of ‘variety and constraint, ’ ‘entropy and information, ’ ‘the law of requisite variety and the decision rule, ’ ‘goal-directedness and control’, ‘feedback and distinctions and relations’ – and knowledge management process – which is comprised of four main dimensions of ‘knowledge creation, ’ ‘conversion and transfer, ’ ‘preservation, ’ and ‘application’. Our statistical population included the staff of Farassan Company, and questionnaires were deployed for gathering the data. According to the analysis, dimensions of ‘variety and constraint’ as well as ‘knowledge transfer and conversion’ were excluded on account of having poor indicators. In addition, research results confirmed the conceptual model with the data collected and the fact that a significant relationship between knowledge management process and cybernetics existed.

The purpose of this descriptive - correlational research is to study the relationship between the salespersons’ personal moral philosophy and their ethical decision making process. It tries to find answers to two main questions: 1) what are the surveyed salespersons’ personal moral philosophy? 2) How this moral philosophy will influence their decision making process? Our Research population, whose opinions were collected using a questionnaire, consisted of the salespersons taking part in the sales training courses offered by the Research Center of Iran Ministry of Commerce. The statistical population size was 300 and according to Morgan and Krejcie’ table (1970), a sample size of 169 was chosen.137 questionnaires out of 142 were proper to be analyzed. Descriptive analysis of the data indicated that the majority of the respondents were working in industries like food, tourism, insurance, publications and engineering services, as salespersons. In addition, Path analysis, employed for the inferential statistics, showed that the respondents’ main moral principle was idealism, and although idealism directly influenced their moral judgment, relativism was more influential on their moral intention (final step in the ethical decision making process) than idealism.

In this paper, with usage of translational cost theory and internal labor market approach, two basic aspects in organizational jobs – measurability and competence – were defined. Next, by combining these attributes, four internal organizational structures were identified as the following: Relational team, primitive team, spot market, obligational market. Afterwards, the proper human resource practices were explained for each of these structures. Data were collected from one of the largest service organizations of Iran. Using checklist, 400 out of 4463 job titles, which were supposed to share more similarities with the mentioned structures were selected. A group of 156 managers and HRM specialists of ‘NAJA’ were chosen for explaining the suitable HRM practices for each of the structures. Analysis of the data revealed: in ‘primitive teams’ and ‘spot markets, ’ job compensation was only limited to the wage, and human resource planning encompasses a short period. Conversely, in ‘relational teams’ and ‘obligation markets, ’compensations were various in type and were not just limited to the wage, also, the HRM planning was for longer terms. Moreover, HRM control over ‘relational team’ and ‘primitive teams’ took more internal forms such as socializing and building commitment, while in ‘spot market’ and ‘obligation markets’ it was external and formal.

Investigating why customers switch their insurance service providers, leads to valuable information for recognizing the likely alterations in customers’ needs and expectations. This research is based on a very fundamental question: why existing customers decide to switch from one service provider to another? To answer this question, factors affecting switching intentions were derived from the literature of current and previous studies. Research data were collected by means of a questionnaire distributed among a population of customers of an insurance company for a period of 3 years. From randomly selected customers, 202 questionnaires were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling and SmartPLS software. Results showed a strong association between service quality and annoyance, on the one hand, and intention to switch service provider, on the other hand. Findings also revealed no evidence for a hypothetical relationship between price unfairness and switching intention. The same result was also found for the moderating effects of switching cost and alternative attractiveness.

To remain in the current competitive world as a manufacturing company, it is vital to use Advanced Manufacturing Systems (AMSs). AMS selection is now considered a strategic decision for organizations, due to the effects it has on their future activities. The process of decision-making involves some complexities which are not only caused by the varied quantitative and qualitative factors involved, but also due to the conflictions between these factors, and the diverse views of stakeholders. Thus, In order to choose AMS type, it is necessary to take into account both the effective factors and the stakeholders' viewpoints, and finally, the most suitable system should be recognized by the management, considering the limitations of the company’s resources. To date, different approaches have been developed for AMS evaluation and selection, with their own advantages and disadvantages - some of them ignoring the qualitative factors and others being time consuming, for instance. This paper combines the AHP method with zero-one goal programming technique, enabling decision - makers to encompass diverse views of stakeholders, and at the same time assess the conflicting factors. The proposed method has been applied to a real world situation to further prove that this combined method can prepare more key information to decision-makers than the rest of the available technology-evaluating methods.

This research was performed to identify and compare the bureaucracy types of the faculties of management in the University of Tehran, and Islamic Azad university (Central Tehran branch), based on Mintzberg model. The research was descriptive-survey both in objective and nature. Statistical population incorporated management faculty members of the aforementioned universities. Data were collected using appropriate documentation and questionnaires, and subsequently were analyzed by suitable statistical methods. Results indicated that the structures of the faculties were a combination of machine and bureaucratic structures with a slight inclination towards the former, also that, the amounts of structural and contextual factors in these faculties were the same indicating no significant difference between them. Moreover, investigation of the structural and contextual factors revealed a mismatch between the structural design ruling these faculties and the professional structures of the universities.

Novel approaches such as "Business Process Management” (BPM) have been taken seriously nowadays, by most industrial sectors due to the role they can play in increasing organization productivity. Accordingly, in order to avoid wasting valuable resources, and even more importantly, to protect the organization against potential hazards of BPM implementation, we must make sure of the organization’s readiness for its successful implementation. The purpose of this study was to present a framework for the assessment of BPM implementation readiness in such organizations. This case study, carried out on Tehran Regional Electric Company (with a statistical society of managers and experts on different levels of that organization) was a 'developmental' and ' applied' study since first the key factors for BPM success were identified, integrated, and developed, and then on the basis of these factors the final framework was presented. T-student techniques, ANOVA (Variance analysis), Chi square, and Friedman tests were used for the hypothesis testing. Finally, findings demonstrated that the company didn’t have enough Readiness for BPM implementation.