JOURNAL OF URBAN ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
Year:2013 | Volume:1 | Issue:2|Papers Count:7

Self-assessment has developed as one of the techniques for the continuous improvement of organizations processes in recent years. Appropriate design and accurate implementation of self-assessment system in an organization allows the management to make decisions based on realities rather than relying on conjectures. Hence, an effective self-assessment model for large organizations was dealt with in this research. The statistical population of this research included all managers, internal auditors and experts of Tehran municipality among which 70 people were randomly selected as the sample. To collect the required data, a questionnaire was used. To estimate the related validity and reliability indexes, content analysis and Cronbach Alpha were run, respectively. To test the research hypotheses, Spearman Correlation Coefficient was calculated. The results showed that the suggested model for selfassessment may have significant effects through proper training.

Tourism industry, nowadays, is considered to be a demand-oriented profession. One of the methods of recognizing the demand is investigating tourists’ motivations for choosing a particular destination upon which the amount and type of supply can be decided. On the other hand, in the geography of spatial behavior, people’s understanding and choice of their surrounding environment is attended to and studied, in other words, it is claimed that an individual’s behavior and perception is derived from his motivations which are divided into“pull-and-push” motivations. A person’s “pull” motivations are originated in the features of the spatial system of a tourist destination. In the current article, via investigating the choosing process of an activity-based destination as an attracting factor, attempts have been made to define, compare, and contrast the spatial model of choosing two outbound destinations, namely Schengen area and Malaysia and an inbound one, i.e. Kish Island, the tourists residing in Tehran. The research method is descriptive via surveys and by means of proper instruments, library deeds and documents, and questionnaires, the required data were collected. To this end, subsequent to choosing appropriate models of “pull and push” factors from among the current models of tourists’ motivation, three types of questionnaires, for each field, were distributed to 416 target tourists. Utilizing the SPSS, the collected data were analyzed by means of Chi Square Tests and LSD (Fisher Least Significant Difference). The results showed that tourists’ imaginations of the facilities and amenities in destinations and the comfort in utilizing them and also the types of activities, not just attractions, are effective in choosing the intended destination.

In recent years, the complexities of urbanization in Iran and raising such issues as urban sustainable development, human development, city economy reinforcement, emphasis on social justice, environment preservation, etc. all in all, have made urban management a more complex and sophisticated issue. As a result, with regard to the extent of variables, a need for a new approach to urban management, on the one hand, and the government strategies and making a reform in the administrative and managerial structure of country, on the other hand, has justified the necessity of focusing on municipalities and of assigning new responsibilities to them. However, nowadays, despite all the emphases and efforts, no integrated system has been established in urban management system of the nation. In the absence of an urban integrated management, disorganization, disharmony, waste of resources, both human and financial, and, eventually, the citizens’ ever-increasing dissatisfaction are inevitable. Thus, the plan for an urban integrated management and the analysis of the current urban management system of the nation are of great importance as they pave the way for removing obstacles and easing the shortcomings. In this regard, the research method has been reported to be descriptive-analytic and library-based. Moreover, the research aims at investigating and clarifying integrated urban management in the nation’s rules and regulations and in identifying problems and legal barriers. The research concludes with offering solutions for such problems and improving the status quo in the nation’s urban management via obtained results.

In order for providing the city and the citizens with their requirements, there is a need for a plan which is made based on drawing a clear perspective, a well-defined purpose, and logic.Moreover, as far as the concept of vision is concerned, foresight will enable the municipalities to better satisfy the current and future needs of the citizens; therefore, the current article, while introduces the process of developing a medium-term executive plan for Qayen municipality, relying on the concept “vision”, adopting a practical approach to BSC model of planning, puts emphasis on the specific potentials of the model in the implementation process as a practical framework for the realization of the vision. The article, suggesting a strategic plan with a collection of a number of cause-and-effect relations, puts forth a visual framework for consolidation of strategic objectives of Qayen municipality within the four-sided BSC. In order to preserve the balance between the dimensions of the BSC and the fourfold function of the municipality - namely development, service, supervision, and administration - and to expand the realm of urban development knowledge, the dimensions of the BSC, i.e. a) budget and financial resources, b) the city and citizen, c) domestic processes, and d) organizational infrastructure as well as strategic factors regarding the three themes of the city, citizen, and urban management are defined. The article concludes by suggesting the method of the system for the development of the financial side of the BSC in the executive plan of Qayen municipality to create an efficient financial system particularly utilizing sustainable income as a practical model.

Recognition and classification of perceived risks of traveling to the tourist destinations can be considered as a useful instrument for tourists-related management and planning. Hence, the current article aims at classifying the risks perceived by the foreign tourists of taking trips to Isfahan and, also, investigating the role of previous travel experiences in perception of such risks. The research population was from among the tourists who had visited Isfahan during April and March of 2012. Via random sampling, a group of 300 tourists were selected to participate in the study. To collect the required data, a questionnaire comprising 29 items was utilized to classify the perceived risks the foreign tourists had come up with when intending to travel to Isfahan. To analyze the collected data, exploratory factor analysis, t-test, and ANOVA were run. The results indicated that the very tourists had experienced four types of risks while visiting the city of Isfahan including health, cultural and social, political, and economic ones. The results also revealed that the perception of the risks between the firsttime visitors to Isfahan and those who had repeated visits to the city was significantly different in terms of political, economic, and health risks in this tourist destination. However, no significant difference was observed between the first-time visitors and those who had several visits to Isfahan in terms of their perception of socio-cultural risk level in the very destination.

The development of agility capabilities, accountability, and rapid adaptation to environmental changes are considered to be instruments for achieving a competitive advantage. Strategic agility is a developed type of agility which, besides rapid accountability, pays specific attention to the strategic aspect and to the prediction of changes in the urban environment before they occur. Most studies in agility-related and competitive-advantage field have been conducted on production agility as well as supply chain agility. In addition to clarifying the concept of strategic agility and the determining factors whereof, the current research aims at investigating into the effect of strategic agility on competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in the city of Semnan to help economic development of the city. Hence, at first, a model was devised for the competitive advantage based on dynamic capabilities theory, and, then, the model was confirmed by the results obtained from factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and correlation coefficient indexes. The results indicated that the strategic agility has a significant effect on the competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in the city of Semnan. Besides, from among competitive advantage factors, strategic agility is highly correlated with innovation. Moreover, resource fluidity has been known to be the most significant factor in achieving a competitive advantage.

Municipalities, as the main organization for urban management and as the executive power for urban planning and management, to carry out projects and operationalize plans, require income resources accessible via different methods; however, what the current article considers a challenge is the method (s) through which such income is to be provided. In fact, since 1983, following the economic independency of municipalities, in addition to the insufficiency of income resources, they have had to cope with the issue of unsustainable income and economic resources. In other words, the municipalities’ income is provided from the sections which, in long run, have many an adverse effect on different aspects of urban life; besides, such income depends on the new activities of urban economics. The current article, through investigating into the income resources of the municipality of Tehran, aims at determining the extent of sustainability or unsustainability of them over a ten-year period during (2000-2009). The research method lends itself to descriptive-analytic one, emphasizing the use of statistical methods. The results indicate that, despite the efforts the municipality of Tehran has made to appropriately plan for obtaining sustainable income, a major share of the municipality income is provided from such unsustainable resources as construction taxes and the fines due to construction violations. Identifying effectively essential factors in local taxation (the one collected by the municipality), the article concludes by suggesting an appropriate model for increasing the contribution of such sustainable income to Tehran municipality. Implementing the very model, either in Tehran municipality or even in the other ones, it is argued that, besides an increase in the income resources of the municipality, the issue of sustainable income is taken into account.