Interdisciplinary Journal of Management Studies
Year:2014 | Volume:7 | Issue:1|Papers Count:8

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between stress management and workforce productivity of Amol Industrial Park located in Mazandaran Province. The total population size in the research was 250 from top managers, middle managers and supervisors responsible in the before-mentioned Industrial Park and the sample size was determined through Morgan sample population volume table (n=150). For data collection, Background Information questionnaire, Stress Management and Workforce Productivity questionnaires were used. As for analyzing the data gained after collecting the questionnaires; Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Pearson Correlation Test, One Sample T Test, Independent Samples Test and Regression Tests were used for hypothesis testing.The results from analyzing the Sub Hypotheses of the research demonstrated that there was a positive and significant correlation between respectful and responsible managers (P=0.005), Managing and communicating existing and future work (P=0.002), Managing the individual within the team (P=0.01), Reasoning/managing difficult situations, (P=0.004) and workforce productivity in this research. As for analyzing the Main Hypotheses of the research, the results demonstrated that there was a positive and significant correlation between stress management and workforce productivity in this research. The results also demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the opinions of male and female managers about the level of workforce productivity and stress management being put in practice in the before-mentioned Industrial Park. And finally the results indicate that the level of workforce productivity and stress management being put in practice in the before mentioned Industrial Park is not under the influence of any of Individual characteristics of managers (e.g. Age, Education Level, Job Title, Employment Background and Employment Status).

The increasing dependency of many businesses with information technology (IT) and the high percentage of the IT investment in all invested capital in business environment ask for more attention to this important driver of business. The limitation of capital budget forces the managers to look for more wise investment in IT. There are many cost-cutting techniques in the literature and each of them has a different impact on the organization. This study is one of the first steps in providing more insight on this issue via proposing a conceptual framework for strategic costcutting in IT. The literature review revealed that the strategic role of IT in organizations, IT costs structure, firm’s IT structure, senior management support and organizational learning are the important factors that affect the cost-cutting technique selection in IT. The proposed framework focuses on the strategic role of IT in business to suggest which cost-cutting techniques are the best to be applied in an organization in order to save costs while ensuring high-quality service and support for business growth and maximizing business value from IT spending.

The goal of this research is to measure the rate of quality of work life of faculty members in University of Tehran. The research type in regard to goal is applied investigative and in regard to data collecting method is descriptive investigative and of measurement branch. The statistical population is faculty members of University of Tehran’s paradises and colleges. In this research, after identification quality of work life criteria and indexes, the rate of quality of work life of faculty members in University of Tehran based on this criteria and indexes, has been measured. For information collecting in fields of: theoretical bases, research literature compilation and scales and aspects identification the library studying method was used. The identified aspects are: factors related to job content, work economic factors, work social factors, balance between work and life. Also in order to measure the status of these aspects among faculty members of University of Tehran, a questionnaire was compiled that its admissibility and permanence was confirmed. Then a questionnaire in a considered sample was distributed. In data analysis for examination the scales and aspects status the statistical test (T-test) is used. The results of this test showed that balance between work and life has middle status, the status of work economic factors is undesirable and the factors related to job content and work social factors have desirable status.

Product innovation success has very much to do with the development of models or metaphors that are able to guide actors. One can observe two traditions in this regard: rational and non-rational models. Apparently in the former the model, such as “development funnel”, is regarded as a mechanism and rigid applicable, picturing innovation as an orderly, goal-oriented, value-neutral, and systematic process. The latter account offers a few non-rational models that depict product innovation as chaotic, messy, and stressful which involves jagged lines of activity, much like “fireworks”. This paper draws on the work of Donald Schon to develop a more socio-politically informed yet pragmatic approach to innovation in organisation i.e. ‘ribbed water balloon’. This model outlines product innovation as a non-rational and socio-technical practice, one that not only reveals politics, uncertainty, unsteadiness, setbacks, and reversals with which actors grapple but also considers rituals, norms and organization’s behavioral world in its understanding.

Employee-customer-profit (ECP) chain is one of the guidelines for organizations ‘success in their life cycle. Strong relationships have been found between employees' attitudes and behaviors, employees’ behaviors and customers’ impressions, and customers’ impressions and revenue growth. Out of this chain, there are some factors that can influence the processes through which these factors interact. One of these factors is information technology (IT) capability. In this research, we modeled the effect of IT capability on ECP chain using structural equation modeling (SEM). Service process innovation (SPI) was also used as a mediating variable between IT capability and ECP chain. This was accomplished based upon quantitative data gathered from a sample of 212 employees of the Technical and Vocational organization in Mashhad city. Results revealed a strong support for the proposed model. In particular, the association between IT capability and SPI with ECP chain and their leverage effect facilitate the organizations' movements along with the chain which was significantly confirmed.

Due to the importance of Physical Distribution Service Quality (PDSQ) in logistic systems, the purpose of this paper is to design a practical scale for measuring the construct through the perspectives of Iranian convenience store retailers. A mixed method approach was employed for the study; in- depth interviews were first carried out with 16 Iranian experienced retailers who actively had worked in the industry; then content analysis was employed to identify the key underlying factors of PDSQ. Using the cluster sampling technique, 100 respondents from a retailing sector of 4 regions out of 22 regions of Tehran were selected for testing the measurement model and determining the importance and satisfaction level.10 important PDSQ factors through perspective of Iranian convenience retailers were extracted and categorized in three dimensions including: Coordination of distribution agent (3 factors), Ordering condition (3 factors), and Behavioral features of distribution agents (4 factors). IPA diagram was drawn finally.

Contractor selection is one of the most important problem in supply chain and its strongly effect on firm’s performance. Because a significant amount of a university’s budget assigns to construction contracts, contractor selection is an important problem for the financial status of universities. Since Contractor selection is a multi-criteria decision making problem (MCDM), lots of methods proposed to face this problem. Selection is a broad comparison of contractors using a common set of criteria and measures. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and other traditional methods widely used for contractor and vendor selection by researches regarding to lots linguistic variables and both qualitative and quantitative criteria and to tackle ambiguous nature of contractor selection problem, although there is some Insufficiency about them. In this article we use FAHP that is a fuzzy extension of AHP to handle the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of different decision variables. The linguistic level of comparisons produced by experts for each comparison is tapped in the form triangular fuzzy numbers to construct fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices. We priorities Tehran university's construction contractor about each criteria and determine the best one about all of them.

Evaluation of performance and productivity is among the fundamental concepts in management. In order to achieve their goals, organizations must evaluate their performance. One of the important stages of performance appraisal is evaluation of organization’s efficiency. Banks, financial and credit institutions are among the most important organizations of every economic system, because every activity which entails asset acquisition and financial resources undoubtedly requires mediation of banks and financial organizations. One of the most vital issues in banks’ efficiency evaluation is identification of input and output variables. Identification of these variables helps to create an appropriate model in order to evaluate the efficiency. The purpose of this paper is clarifying of the importance of the input and output in Islamic banking with the use of the content analysis method. In this paper various approaches that were selected by researchers are reviewed and classified. Then the input and output variables in the Islamic banking is analyzed. The result show that the intermediation approach is the acceptable approach among scholars furthermore, labors and deposits are best inputs while, loans and investment are best outputs.