Interdisciplinary Journal of Management Studies
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:1|Papers Count:11

Vital decisions made at the strategic level in an organization are not only intricate but also costly to alter. It is therefore important to find a comprehensive approach to deal with such a possibility. One of the major problems of a common balanced scorecard (BSC)-based model in strategic management is lack of a ranking system for strategic objectives in order to enable prioritization of the operational actions for strategy development. In this paper, we have proposed an approach to apply the Logarithmic Fuzzy Preference Programming (LFPP) and the Fuzzy Ratio System (FRS) techniques to resolve this issue. To propose a comprehensive approach, the strategy canvas concept, the four actions framework of the blue-ocean strategy model, and the competitive strategy development techniques of the Judo Strategy model can be employed for problem formulation. To check for applicability, the proposed model was applied to a case of X Tile and Ceramics Company. This research applied a combination of the Judo Strategy and the blue-ocean model in the form of a BSC strategic planning to develop strategic objectives as well as utilized the LFPP and FRS techniques to rank the objectives based on their strategic goals.

As one of the motivational theories which define both values and attitudes beyond personal as well as organizational benefits, Public Service Motivation (PSM) model aims to underscore the appreciation of individuals with regard to public interests. If PSM pattern being optional is synchronized with civic-organizational behavior, its effectiveness is manifested in improving service quality. The current study aims to investigate PSM model and civic-organizational behavior with respect to service quality. In addition, the background theoretical literature and the research hypotheses are scrutinized. The participants of the study consist of 306 employees of the Republic of Tajikistan's ministry and 384 customers of Tajikistan's governmental organizations who were selected with stratified-random sampling method. In order to analyze the data after the questionnaires' distribution phase, SPSS 18 software was run at two levels of descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive approach of correlation Parametric Regression of multi-variables was utilized in this study. The results of the current research indicate that there is a significant relationship between PSM pattern and civic-organizational behavior with respect to service quality. Hence, providing sufficient services through hiring highly-motivated employees for public services significantly increases public trust with regard to the government as the source of providing high-quality services.

Nowadays, the awareness of service firms’ managers about the crucial role of customers in the success or failure of their business has increased. This has led them to this fact that the best strategy for surviving in the marketplace is encouraging customers’ prosocial behaviors in service delivery process. Reasonably, one of the best strategies to encourage customers toward these behaviors is service delivering quality. Despite the importance of this issue, marketing researchers have not investigated the effect of customers’ perceived service quality on their prosocial behaviors yet. The current study aims to bridge this research gap. Hence, a sample consisting of 381 customers of passenger transportation agencies (ground transportation), in the city of Shiraz, by convenient method were selected and surveyed. In addition, based on the theoretical framework of the research variables, the conceptual model was proposed. Finally, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses and it was found that the customers' perception of service quality, through affecting their satisfaction, can be reflected in their prosocial responses toward the agency. Furthermore, the customers' perception of setting and staff's dimension of service quality respectively have more positive effect on their satisfaction.

Nowadays, belief in the criteria and conditions of interactions with an organization to promote customer relationships is somehow tied to the organizational performance, and its final goal is of great importance. In the literature on organizational behavior, this belief is defined as the “psychological contract”. The intention of this mixed research is to identify and discover the contents of psychological contracts within “relationship marketing” between customers and banks. In the first phase, qualitative research with a phenomenological approach was applied to study customers’ experiences about psychological contracts. In this phase, the psychological contracts within relationship marketing were assessed through a questionnaire. Next, the data from the questionnaires were “factor analyzed” by Lisrel. We noted a fundamental understanding of the types of psychological contracts in the context of a relationship between a bank and its customers. Marketing policies with regard to the terms extracted from a certain kind of psychological contract in the study provided local and advanced results.

A project is any endeavor involving planned action, for example, developing a new product or constructing a dam. Major factors for a project to be successful are applying performance measurement and feedback tool. One such well-known performance measurement tool to control the project execution is earned value management (EVM). EVM uses the fundamental principle that trends in the past can be good predictors of the future. It was originally developed to follow time and cost of a project, but it has some weak points in analyzing the time performance of a project. In this article, we first explain these weak points in detail. Then, to improve them, we develop two methods: the first one is a simple and approximation method to minimize errors in EVM analysis with a high probability and the second method is an exact approach that uses earned value and floating time concepts. At the end, the performance of the proposed methods is evaluated and analyzed on a set of instances containing a variety of project sizes. The results of this experimentation show that the efficiency of the methods is relatively good.

This paper investigates the relationship between earnings management and quality of earnings for the bankrupt and non-bankrupt firms listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2007 to 2012.The earnings quality is measured by four separate accounting-based earnings attributes: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, earnings and is also examined by testing the relationship between discretionary accruals as a measure of earnings management, being opportunistic or efficient earnings management. Also, the future profitability was measured by each of the three variables, future change of earnings, future cash flow from operation, and future non-discretionary earnings. The results of estimating unbalanced panel data technique for 55 firms subjected to bankruptcy of Altman's model, and 198 non-bankrupt firms, shows that the bankrupt firms tend to use opportunistic earnings management, and the non-bankrupt choose efficient earnings management. Moreover, the results show that earnings management performs better than earnings quality in predicting future profitability. Meanwhile, the non-discretionary earnings more effectively than future change of earnings and future cash flow from operation for providing a picture of the future profitability of the firm.

This study focuses on the forecasting of energy demands of residential and commercial sectors using linear and exponential functions. The coefficients were obtained from genetic and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms. Totally, 72 different scenarios with various inputs were investigated. Consumption data in respect of residential and commercial sectors in Iran were collected from the annual reports of the central bank, Ministry of Energy and the Petroleum Ministry of Iran (2010). The data from 1967 to 2010 were considered for the case of this study. The available data were used partly to obtain the optimal, or near optimal values of the coefficient parameters (1967–2006) and for testing the models (2007–2010). Results show that the PSO energy demand estimation exponential model with inputs, including value added of all economic sectors, value of made buildings, population, and price indices of electrical and fuel appliances using the mean absolute percentage error on tests data were 1.97%, was considered the most suitable model. Finally, basing on the best scenario, the energy demand of residential and commercial sectors is estimated at 1718 mega barrels of oil equivalent up to the year 2032.

The development of the Cyprus Stock Exchange together with the increasing trend of investors’ presence in financing activities has led to the importance of this market. In such circumstances, the first step towards a sustainable development of the Exchange is to support the investors. Risk of bankruptcy for the investee is a major challenge that an inexperienced stock investor encounters. In this study, for predicting bankruptcy, an attempt has been made to design a valid and accurate model that could act as a deterrent to improper stock selection. In most of the previous studies, non-native models have been used to predict bankruptcy in companies. However, the present study has attempted to overcome the shortcomings of the earlier studies through designing an indigenous model based on the data collected from 53 non-financial companies out of 103 listed companies in the Cyprus Stock Market from 2007 to 2012, using a complete set of variables affecting bankruptcy (accounting, market and macroeconomic variables), and with using the logistic regression method. The results showed that the accuracy of bankruptcy models that are based on accounting and market variables has been respectively 91.2% and 82.1%, respectively. On the other hand, it was shown that there is no significant relationship between macroeconomic variables and the probability likelihood of bankruptcy.

Researchers are of the belief that employee voice has favorable effects for both the employee and the organization. However, the effect of employee voice on creativity, and the process through which it influences creativity, has hitherto received little attention. This study aimed at investigating the relationship between perceived employee voice and creativity. Employees of three premier dairy companies located in Mazandaran province constituted the statistical population of this research. Using a random sampling method, 302 employees were selected as the research sample. Data was gathered through a questionnaire. Before testing the hypotheses, a localized scale was developed for employee voice. Results of the data analysis revealed that perception of employee voice has a positive effect on work meaningfulness. Moreover, work meaningfulness has a positive effect on intrinsic motivation. Results also prove that intrinsic motivation has a significantly positive effect on an individual employee's creativity.

Nowadays, many national problems-especially the cultural and social ones-originate from transnational factors, a trend called globalization, and particularly cultural imperialism. In particular, the arrival of post-modernism and media since the 1960s, and at the same time, changes that have taken place such as feminism, social and sexual movements, and the extension of individualism in the West, have resulted in fundamental changes in the cultural and social environment of communities, which have also affected our society's cultural and social space in recent decades, leading to a phenomenon called "improper hijab". The current paper aims to study the role of universities' cultural management in dealing with expanding dressing patterns and abnormal behavior using the survey procedure method. Subjects of the present study are 370 students of Tehran Central Branch of Islamic Azad University (Valie-Asr University Complex) in the years 2012-2013, who were selected randomly. A questionnaire was prepared for collecting the data. Multivariate regression, correlation, T-test and ANOVA were used in order to test the data. The results suggested that universities' cultural management, which is considered as a role and presented as an independent variable of the current research, has a meaningful and significantly increasing effect on improper hijab as a dependent variable, and the hijab cultural situation in universities can be predicted with its change.