Management Research in Iran
Year:2009 | Volume:13 | Issue:2 (61)|Papers Count:10

Information systems security (ISS) is a critical issue that organizations face world wide. Information systems security involves both technology and people (human factors). The focus in most researches on information systems’, security as a technical issue has dominated ISS researches and practices.Lately, a new paradigm is emerging, addressing it as a “people issue” and an "organizational issue". In that paradigm, people are the weakest element in the information system’s security.The present research takes a different perspective on ISS by focusing on "behavioral information security" and with considering the general lack of empirical research and the importance of information security to modem organizations, it presents a managerial framework for explore the role of human factors in ISS. Specifically the purpose of this research was to identify and model the critical managerial constructs that mostly influence the effectiveness of ISS.The methodology of this study combines both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Through a qualitative technique and investigating the research literature, identified key constructs in information systems security were identified. Then developed mod was based on the effects of these constructs on the information systems' security effectiveness. Then based on the research literature and scholars ideas, a questionnaire was developed and distributed in some organizations. The data obtained were analyzed with SPSS and LISREL software. The results of empirical analysis supported and validated the model.

This research was designed to identify the critical success factors of business process reengineering in an Iranian defense industries case study based on multivariate data analysis. Through developing a business process reengineering model and implementing it on the case study, the business processes were be managed and then its success was be analyzed, by a questionnaire. This analysis initially, represents the success of applied changes, and then follows the critical success factors of process reengineering in three main factors.Subsequently, by multiple regression tool, the business process reengineering success as dependent variable was estimated by the above three factors. The results, showed goodness and validity of the regression model. Accordingly, beliefto change, change of infrastructures, participation of people in changing programs and decreasing of the resistance against the changes are the critical success factors of business process reengineering in the respective organization.

The attention to servant leadership has increased in the recent years and different kinds of business, profit, educational and even governmental organizations have used servant leadership principles for managing their organizations. But doubts have been raised in regard to the effectiveness of implementing servant leadership for organizational effectiveness, especially, in governmental organizations. In the light of mixing Iranian culture with the goals of servantitude and importance of the topic, this article is concerned to test the effect of servant leadership on organizational effectiveness of Iranian governmental organizations through the two ways of leadership and followership effectiveness. For this purpose, after problem statement and reviewing the literature, the factors and the variables of theoretical research model was recognized and the respected questions were distributed among the managers and employees of 22 Iranian public organizations. T- student test was employed for examining the whole status of research dimensions.For testing the hypotheses, statistical tests of regression and Spearman correlation were employed. In examininig the relation between research dimensions, all of the relationships under study were verified. But the low score obtained for the mean of servant Leadership Measuring Instrument (OLA) in comparison to average mean explained that servant leadership is exercised weakly in Iranian public organizations while paternalistic leadership dominated them. Also the weak relationship of realization of organizational effectiveness through servant leadership - followership effectiveness denotes the lack of necessary attention to the followers and their role in organizational effectiveness. Finally, some suggestions are offered according to the results.

In B2C models of e-commerce, customer trust is considered as one of the key factors of successfulness, and many scholars believe that the success factor in e-commerce is establishment and implementation of a safe and reliable purchasing process for the customers.The aim of this research was to study the effective factors on customer trust in e-commerce. To do so, the research hypotheses were developed to examine individual, company and infrastructural variables.Statistical population of this research was the customers, who had the Experience of e- purchasing from the e-stores of “Iranian virtual community”.As the results of data analysis showed, the cooperative and infastructural variables had positive influence on customer trust but individual variables had no positive influence on customer trust.

Information Technology (IT) and organizational Excellence Models have significant impacted on most of Iranian organizations. Although each has been widely researched all over the world, however, there is little well founded empirical research on the relationship between Information Technology (IT) and Total Quality Management (TQM) or Organizational Excellence Models (which are based on TQM).This paper presents an investigation of such relationships through a survey of the most successful industrial companies in Iran.These companies were selected among the applicants of National Productivity and Business Excellence Award in the years 2004 and 2005, All of these companies are using EFQM excellence model.The main purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of IT on Organizational Excellence in Iranian companies.To develop a measurement construct, it is necessary to state the hypotheses to be tested, which in turn requires an underlying theoretical framework. A framework for testing the hypotheses was developed. Other influencing factors such as company size and production type were considered in this framework.The results indicated that the size of company is an influencing factor on applying IT and Excellence Models. However, most intensive users of IT perceive a bigger impact on Excellence Model criteria.

With regard to the increase of competitive atmosphere and companies’ endeavors to capture more segments of the market, the necessity of codifying new models to apply competitive strategies, seems more momentous than before.Accordingly, with due respect to cost management, both attracting customers’satisfaction and maintaining profit margin of the manufacturers look to be highly essential.The present research was carried out to design an appropriate model for the organizational change strategy in the cost management of Iran Khodro Company’s Supply Chain.The research looks into the elements influencing the cost management, i.e. behavioral and structural factors as well as competitors and technology through the community, via conducting extensive studies on the change known models and identifying the effective elements in creating change in the cost management with regard to organizational behavior approach.Hence, a conceptual Model was demonstrated in terms of the relations between the four major aspects influencing the cost management and ten variables creating such aspects as well. In relation to the behavioral aspect, the influencing elements were studied at three behavioral levels, namely individual, group and organization levels. In relation to the competitors, the effects of being a single source and the structure of companies’ costs, and in relation to technology, the effects of production and information technologies were assayed. In relation to the structure, the effects of complexity, formality and concentration on the change strategy of Cost management were observed.The questionnaires distributed were then collected from 41 A-grade manufacturers in the Parts Supply Chain of Iran Khodro Company. The results showed that among the introduced elements in the conceptual model, the effect of competitors on cost management was not affirmed.Besides, the study on the suppliers’ behaviors showed that it influences the strategies of cost change management only at organization level. The effect of organizational structure on cost management was confirmed based on the complexity of the elements only.Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that elements of formality and concentration have no or have an insignificant effect on the proposed model.However, the fundamental result of the research confirmed the relation between technology and cost management within the two areas of production and information technologies.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the effect of agile capabilities of manufacturing companies on their manufacturing performance. Methodology of this investigation was causal modeling with Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks are graphical structures for representing probabilistic relationships of a number of variables and for doing probabilistic inference using the variables. The required data for the study were collected from a sample of auto parts manufacturers in cooperation with Andishe Farafan Engineering Co, Sazeh Gostar Co, and Bahman Group. Measurement scale conceptualization and validation methodology were used for the study questionnaire development. The categorical measurements for each concept were obtained from the application of K-means cluster analysis using questionnaire indicators as inputs. These measures were used for causal modeling and hypothesis testing with Bayesian networks. Further, optimal models were identified using Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). This model represents the casual relationships within and between the agile capabilities and manufacturing performance measures, which can be used in agile manufacturing theory development and agile manufacturing implementation in organizations.

Many of management theorists describe learning organization as a living and evolutionary system that enhances its performance by acquiring knowledge. “Thinking about future or future building” and “increasing learning capacity” are two key factors that have been emphasized by the authors of learning organizations. In new century, learning is survival for organizations and those organizations that do not make productive learning no longer to be lived.Managers may have unreal understanding about the amount of learning in their organizations and need a device for measuring the characteristics of learning organizations in it.This article developed the required indicators for measuring five main characteristics of learning organizations including: leadership, manpower, organizational design, organizational culture and mission/strategy characteristics, and examined content validity, construct validity, convergent validity and discriminate validity of the measurement devices with Delphi, confirmatory factor analysis and variable analysis methods.The proved indicators in this study formed a questionnaire that may be used for measuring the amount of learning organizations characteristics in different firms and organizations.

The purpose of this research was to study the direct and nondirect relations between the total quality management dimensions and perceived procedural justice with organizational commitment. For this aim, 294 persons from Isfahan city organizations were randomly selected to answer the research questionnaires. The questionnaires were Brooks and Zeitz's total quality management questionnaire with 24 items, Neihoff and Moorman’s procedural justice questionnaire with 15 items, Meyer and Allen’s affective commitment and Hom and Griffeth' s continuance commitment questionnaire with 3 and 5 items, respectively.All of the above questionnaires were translated and prepared for the first time in this research. The reliability and validity of the questionnaires were verified. The research hypotheses were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and path. The results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between the total quality management dimensions and procedural justice with affective commitment. But among the total quality management dimensions, only leader vision and use of data or information along with procedural justice had positive relation with continuance commitment. The results of path analysis showed that there was a direct relation between affective commitment (and not total quality management dimensions and perceived procedural justice) and continuance commitment. Also there was a relation between perceived procedural justice and affective commitment and between the total quality management dimensions and perceived procedural justice. Finally, the implications of the effects of total quality management dimensions on affective and continuance commitment were discussed.

In this paper, with the priority of measuring and promoting productivity in energy sector, we presented a model for evaluating the technical efficiency of oil refineries, as huge producers of energy and different fuels. The basis of evaluation in this research was Math modeling by using new and advanced operational research techniques such as data envelopment analysis, goal programming, analytical hierarchy process and designing combined models. The formulating process was made under two different scenarios and assumptions: consumption-production and cost-income. The final results ranked the order and sort of each refinery as a decision making unit. In addition to calculation of each unit's score, we also made a comparison between the units, their weaknesses and the favorite score of each unit in real situation. This research focuses on the optimized utilization of refining processes with less refining cost and ability to make more valuable products considering the present availabilities and capacities.