Management Research in Iran
Year:2012 | Volume:16 | Issue:2 (75)|Papers Count:10

The importance of the study of Knowledge Active Forgetting (KAF) is generally described. In this paper, in order to create a comprehensive definition, different definitions of organizational forgetting and knowledge active forgetting presented in the literature are reviewed. In addition, key concepts and characteristics that should be considered in the definition of KAF are extracted. Accordingly, the concept of KAF, as an intentional and systematic activity, is dependent on the value of knowledge manages. Then, in order to analyze the relationship between KAF and knowledge stickiness to person and organizational context, we gathered qualitative rich data by case study as one of the qualitative research methods. Based on the results of data analysis, it can be expressed that by increasing of the stickiness of knowledge to person and organizational context, the resistance to process of KAF is increased. As a result, organization must allocate more time and effort in order to manage old and obsolete knowledge. The results of this paper can help managers of organizations to manage their old and obsolete knowledge according to the level of knowledge stickiness to people and organizational context.

Today work ethics and customer-orientation are very important and many scientific discussions are given about them. Though the use of the word "customer-orientation" goes back to some recent decades, which has been changed to competitive advantage for companies, however there are few articles, which primarily study the relationship between work ethics and customer-orientation. This article first describes the literature of the work ethics and customer-orientation and also some examples of the work ethics. Then it surveys their relationship with customer-orientation. The expected population is 160. By using affirmatives factor analysis, the work ethics from the point view of Miller and also customer-orientation indexes from the point view of Sahney were confirmed. Then the relationship between the work ethics and customer-orientation with the use of Spearmen coefficient is measured. The results of the research showed that, in Almas Kavir Tile Company of Rafsangan, the level of work ethics is higher than %50, customer-orientation is higher than %50 and there is a significant relationship between work ethics and custom-orientation.

After formation in public sector the concept of strategic management has been rapidly transferred to private sector, and caused dramatic changes in competition among private businesses. Now it seems that if this powerful tool comes back to its birthplace (public sector), it can solve many problems of the public arena. It is evident that implementation of strategic management in public organizations of Iran requires a local model. Therefore, it seems that the preliminary step for designing the local strategic management model for these organizations is identifying the current processes of strategy formation in them in order to examine the adaptation the theoretical literature of strategy to these organizations. Then we need to design a model that is compatible with the current situation of Iranian organizations and can be implemented in them. Thus this paper seeks to explain the strategy formation process in public organizations that are active in the political arena of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In recent decade, development of different technologies is dramitically high that has influenced services. One of the fields affected from information technology is bankining industry. Wireless technology is one of the many fields of information technology that have a greate development in the recent years; one of its results is mobile banking service. Banking industry is a smple that uses data mining technique. Data mining is a kind of exploring knowledge to solve a special problem. In this research, 232817 data have been used to find some models by artificial neural networks and naive bayes technique in according to customers' attributes. Furtheremore, the results of this research help to classify customers who use mobile banking service. Then the bank can offer the service to those who is in this classification but do not use this service. So the bank can attract more customers, maintain its customers, and keep high customers' satisfaction. Also, in this way, it is possible that using this service, by the targeted customers, encourage others to use this service. This research revealed that artificial neural networks is more accurate than naivie bayes approach (it s about 0.5%) and the research's hypothesis is proved.

Managers, in decision making process, are usually facing with choice problems. Choosing an alternative between the number of alternatives, selecting a number of factors among a set of criteria (screening phase) in order to better analyzing a problem, and choosing a strategy to improve public welfare service among a number of strategies are the examples of this situation. In this paper, selection of factors among a set of different criteria is discussed. This activity can be called "screening phase of criteria". There are different approaches to screen the criteria suchas filtering in a group with experts, voting, 80-20 rule, etc. The problem with these methods is the existence of multiple stakeholders with diversity of viewpoints. Each expert has his/her own view about a specific criterion and, for this reason, the experts put emphasis on their selected criteria. Therefore, each individual expert evaluates his/her chosen criteria more than the others. Usually, those criteria are chosen, which are common among experts in order to cover the views points of stakeholders. In other words, those criteria finally should be considered to have minimum disagreement. This paper uses goal programming approach for maximizing the consensus and minimizing the disagreements between the experts with ordinal scale preferences. The goal programming models are discussed in different aspects. In order to validate the models, a real case problem has been used.

This article investigates the impact of social network size on business performance based on GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) data of Iran, Croatia and Denmark in 2008-2010. A sample of 1801 owner-managers participated in the GEM interviews was used. Social network of an entrepreneur is made up of private, job, experience, professional and market networks. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the experience network and private network have the highest and lowest factor loadings, respectively. Similarly, in factor analysis of performance, as a latent variable, the highest factor loading is for export and the lowest is for growth expectation. The results showed that Danish entrepreneurs establish their business mostly to exploit opportunities. The entrepreneurs' social network size in Iran is 2.9 while in two other countries, it is 6. The size of private network is higher than the size of other networks in Iran. The result of structural equation modelling showed that business performance (innovation, export and growth expectation) is affected significantly by social network size (74%), and this effect is moderated by role model (0.07%) and opportunity motivation (6%).

This study aimed to investigate the relationship as well as the impact of training methods on knowledge management process in Atomic Energy Organization of IRAN (AEOI) as a research based organization. The target population consisted of all experts in, AEOI. Based on Krejcie and Morgan table, 328 statistical samples were randomly selected. Instrument for data collection was questionnaire made by the researcher and its reliability level was acceptable. The results of the study showed significant relationship between training methods and knowledge management process. Based on this research, active practical method has high regression impact on knowledge creation.

Supplier selection is a complex but important decision that requires careful review of various performance criteria. Traditionally, models of supplier selection have been based on cardinal data with less emphasis on ordinal data. However, with the widespread use of production methods such as the just-in-time method, recently more emphasis is placed on considering imprecise data-i.e., mixture of interval and ordinal data. This article proposes to use data envelopment analysis (DEA) with double frontiers for supplier selection, a methodology that considers not only the optimistic efficiency but also the pessimistic efficiency of each supplier. Compared with the traditional DEA, the new DEA with double frontiers can identify the best supplier accurately and easily without imposing any weight limitations. A numerical example will be examined using the DEA approach with double frontiers to illustrate its simplicity and usefulness in the supplier selection and justification.

In the recent decade, there has been a great deal of interest in work engagement. This interest stems from evidences that show a strong relationship between work engagement and individual and organizational outcomes. It has been reported that the level of employee engagement in organization is low, which costs organization billions of dollar in terms of lost productivity. Different factors (such as job demands, job resources, and personal resources) have been identified as antecedents and also different factor (such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, etc.) as consequences of work engagement. In this line, this research aimed to explain antecedents of work engagement and their effect on organizational commitment. The results showed that job resources (autonomy, social support, feedback, supervisory coaching, and opportunities for development) and personal resources (self efficacy, proactive personality and conscientious trait) are work engagement antecedents. Finally work engagement has positive effect on organizational commitment.

Today, managers in all organizations call for optimum use of existing facilities and capacity in different sectors. Therefore, having a model to evaluate the performance seems very necessary and reasonable. The purpose of this study is to provide a hybrid model of the fuzzy network analysis, balanced score card and fuzzy data envelopment analysis for performance evaluation of the branch offices of Yazd Cooperative in order to identifying efficient and inefficient branches, developing appropriate strategies to improve the performance of inefficient branches and further strengthening of efficient branches. This study used balanced scorecard model to extract the assessment criteria, fuzzy analysis network process technique to estimate fuzzy relative importance of each indicator under a single perspective, and fuzzy data envelopment analysis to evaluate the performance of branches. Financial perspective was evaluated as the most important dimention, and Yazd and Ardakan branches were identified as the highest efficient branches in performance level.