JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT & EVOLUTION MANAGEMENT
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue:9|Papers Count:8

Today, tourism is considered as one of the largest and most diversified industries in the world. Although Iran stands the 10th place in terms of tourism potentials, it has failed to attract enough tourists. Consequently, it suffers from a low status related to tourism even among the Middle East countries. This study aims to examine the reasons behind Iran' failure to attract tourists. To this end, tourism experts and professors as well as senior managers were consulted. 103 subjects were selected randomly, using simple stratified sampling. Then, a 42-item questionnaire was administered to the participants and exploratory factorial analysis was run. The factors derived included: 1-infrsatructure, 2-political 3-cultural 4-govrnemntal (public) 5-human 6-managerial 7-economical. Finally, the research hypotheses were tested using t-test. The results show that all the seven hypotheses are confirmed, with inadequate infrastructure as the biggest barrier, followed by political and cultural barriers.

In this paper, attempts are made to identify obstacles to strategy implementation in Golestan province's tax affairs. Data were collected through a survey. The sample included all employees and managers in the province's tax affairs. Therefore, based on the current literature and views of experts and specialists, 47 variables were identified as barriers to implementing the strategy. Using Kolmogorov Smirnov test, we determined the distribution of the questionnaire data. The data analysis revealed 35 major obstacles from 47 primary obstacles. Rating was completed using Friedman test. The findings may help us reduce the probability of failure in implementing the strategy.

Entrepreneurship can result in economical developments and can be considered as a substitution for conventional work culture. In this paper, entrepreneurial tendency is investigated. To this end, a comprehensive model of entrepreneurship is utilized. The questionnaires were distributed among 49 male and 42 female students of physical education. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 18. The results show that there is a significant difference between male and female students in terms of drive and energy, independency, risk taking and creativity attributes. However, no significant difference between them for the need for achievement attribute was found. In general, the findings show that entrepreneurial tendency of male students is higher than female students. In this paper, the weights of these attributes are obtained by fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and a mathematical equation is developed for forecasting entrepreneurial tendency. The results of FAHP depicted ranking of entrepreneurial tendency attributes as: drive and energy, risk taking, creativity, independency and need for achievement.

Supplier Selection is a Multiple-Attribute Decision- Making (MADM). The Grey Decision-Making method is a proper technique for ranking suppliers in cases where the existing qualitative attribute is in an uncertain environment. Taking Advantages of the grey theory concept, linguistic variables are turned in togrey numbers and then used in MADM techniques. But an important issue in most MADM techniques such as TOPSIS method is independence request of attributes, which if not considered, may lead to false results. The proposed approach in this article is Factor Analysis (FA) technique for determination of independent factors and their substitution with attributes in grey TOPSIS method. In the proposed approach, independent factors are obtained by FA technique after determination of the weights of attributes and making initial grey decision-making matrix. Weight of any factor is obtained from average of the attributes' weight related to its factor. Also components of the grey decision- making matrix after FA rank will be obtained from average of attribute components related to any factor in initial decision-making matrix. Finally, the suppliers are being ranked by using grey possibility degree. In this paper, the suggested approach has been used to ranking the five suppliers of SazehGostarSaipa company.

Nowadays, global speedy transformations have forced organizations to investigate risk management in supply chain in order to overcome their insecure conditions. Suppliers should produce materials and parts with of high quality and low costs. Identifying and ranking of the effective risks in supply chain is necessary in order to achieve this goal. In this paper, in addition to providing an explanation of non-determinant concepts in supply chain, and the identification of risks supply chain and determining the intensity of their effects, risk management in supply chain has been explained as one of the main functions of managers. In addition, we have recognized the most important supply chain risks on the basis of suggested model and also have designed the questionnaire which has not only measured the severity of risks relating to each other. Finally, the results were analyzed using DEMATEL technique in order to clarify the most important supply chain risks regarding their priorities, e.g. environmental, financial, strategic, informative and communicative technology.

Supplier selection and evaluation is increasingly studied as a critical decision in supply chain management. Various decision making approaches have been proposed to tackle this problem. Supplier selection is a complex multi criteria decision making problem including both quantitative and qualitative factors rather than a single factor such as cost in a traditional way. This paper proposes Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), as one of the multi criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches, for selecting and rating potential suppliers in an automotive industry. MCDM methods are formal approaches to structure information and decision evaluation in problems with multiple, conflicting goals. AHP integrates experts' opinions and evaluation scores, and devises the complex decision making system into a simple elementary hierarchy system. The evaluation method in terms of ratio scale is then employed to perform relative importance pair-wise comparison among every criterion. Finally, a realistic case study is presented in which an automobile manufacturer evaluates and ranks the suppliers of "coil spring" part of "Tiba" automobile based on several criteria of supply reliability.

An examination of office automation tools in order to achieve important strategies for saving time, responding quickly to customers and increasing accuracy and reducing the cost of doing things is highly significant. The main goal of this paper is to identify the impact of office automation on efficiency of organizations. The sample consists of 97 managers and experts selected through simple random sampling method. Research Methodology is descriptive and analytical. Instrumentation included a questionnaires whose validity and reliability was estimated. Data were analyzed using t-test and Kruskal–Wallis. The findings confirmed the positive effect of the use of office automation on time, responding quickly to customers and doing things carefully in order to foster efficiency.

Impulse Buying, which is perceived as unplanned purchases, and its important contribution to consumers' shopping, has been regarded as an important consumer behavior by market specialists over the past four decades. A model of the precursors of Urge to Buy Impulsively is presented and empirically tested with data drawn at one point in time (During post-shopping questionnaire filling) from some urban shopping centers. Analysis of the data utilizing LISREL8.5 supported many of the predictions. Situational variables (time available and money available) and individual difference variables (shopping enjoyment and impulse buying tendency) were found to influence a set of endogenous variables, including positive and negative effect, browsing activity and ultimately urge to buy impulsively. Whether or not an impulse buying behavior occurred, the research has scrutinized the various aspects of the idea.