Strategic assessment of the organizational performance in the industrial environment is one of the primary and essential prerequisites for developing improvement plans in organizations. This issue is so crucial that one of the on-going affairs in the organizations is to identify the weakness and strength points. One of the effective models for assessing the organizations performance is balance scorecard (BSC) model, which examines all the aspects of an organization. The proposed study of this paper investigates the existing strategic objectives in the strategy map of a pipe company located in city of Shiraz, Iran. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 31 managers, 94 regular employees and 110 customers of this firm for the fiscal year ended 2011. The results of our study indicate that the firm could reach 41.4% of its financial objectives, 87.38% of its customers’ requirements, 66.13% of internal processes and 70.94% of its learning necessities according to four major BSC requirements. In summary, the firm could reach 66.45 % of its requirements during the fiscal year of 2011.

During the past few years, there have been growing competition in banking industry in Iran and there is a growing trend on emerge of new banks, which makes it difficult for existing banks to keep market share. In this paper, we study the effect of advertisements on customers’ willingness to accept banking services based on modulatory role of brand. The proposed study has been performed among 440 randomly selected customers in city of Tehran, Iran who were doing banking business with one of Iranian banks called Parsian. The results of survey have been analyzed using structural equation modeling and the preliminary results indicate that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between brand advertisement and associate name and brand identification. However, there was no meaningful relationship between brand advertisement and customer loyalty towards to brand. In addition, the results of survey indicate there was a meaningful relationship between brand equity components including perception quality on brand name, customer awareness from brand, loyalty to brand and customers’ willingness to accept banking services on modulatory role of brand.

University of applied science and technology has been designed to create a platform for multilateral activities such as industrial, military and academic in developing countries to promote science and scientific research applications. These universities are responsible to promote practical training in quantitative and qualitative indicators and they provide appropriate infrastructure to implement theoretical graduates to solve practical problems to build necessary infrastructure to transfer modern technology into developing countries. During the past few years, there have been tremendous development on these units but some of them have not been efficient. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the relative efficiencies of various units of applied science and technology universities using data envelopment analysis. The proposed model of this paper uses two inputs including human resources as well as total assets and two outputs including the number of graduate students as well as operating profit. The results of the study have indicated that some of the units are inefficient and need to be merged with other units to increase the relative efficiency of these universities.

During the past two decades, there have been some concerns on application of multiple criteria decision making on prioritizing production planning. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to use Technique of ranking by similarity by positive ideal solution (TOPSIS) for ranking various alternatives productions in an Iranian firm in Faucet industry named Irandoosh. The proposed study uses fuzzy numbers to handle uncertainty and using five criteria of profitability, life cycle, quality, social issues and production capacity, analytical hierarchy process is employed to rank various alternatives and then rank different products based on TOPSIS technique.

For many years, investors used some basic financial ratios to measure the relative performance of various active industries based on two-digit ISIC classification. However, direct implementation of basic financial figures may not be practical in today & apos; s business environment since investors face with different criteria. The proposed model of this paper uses Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to compare 37 various industries based on different financial figures. We gather the necessary data over the period of 2009-2010 from Tehran Stock Exchange and investigate the data in two stages. In the first stage, we perform fundamental analysis to select the most appropriate firms and the in the second stage, we use TOPSIS to rank selected firms based on different criteria. The results of the study confirm that information and communication technology, which is one of the biggest firms in this exchange is considered as the best option (relative ranking 0.88 in two years) followed by some Cement industry (with relative ranking of 0.26 in 2009 and 0.19 in 2010) and oil refinery units (with relative ranking of 0.23 in 2009 and 0.19 in 2010). The figure also shows that other firms maintain low ratios varied from 0.23 to 0.01. The lowest industry ranking belongs to marine industry.

One of the primary concerns of many governmental agencies is to create job and working opportunities. The job creation is often promoted by loans devoted from the banks. This paper performs an empirical study to measure the relative efficiency of job creation from year 2002 to 2010 in different cities including Semnan, Dameghan, Shahrood, Garmsar and Mahdishahr located in west region of Iran. The proposed model of this paper uses data envelopment analysis where there are two inputs including the granted loans to private sector and the job applicants and two outputs including the assigned to work and the number of jobs created. The results indicate that the city of Garmsar represents the highest efficiency and Damghan maintains the lowest efficiency.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the performance of a mining firm in province of Semnan, Iran based on fuzzy fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique. The proposed study of this paper uses strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) technique to analyze the firm and using DEMATEL rank various items based on their relative importance. Based on the results of our survey, cost reduction and increase investment in mining sector are the most important components of this survey. The study also compares the results with similar study, which has recently been accomplished and we believe the proposed model is capable of detecting possible threats and helping us provide possible actions.

This paper presents a hybrid method for detecting the most important failure items as well as the most effective alternative strategy to cope with possible events. The proposed model of this paper uses grey technique to rank various alternatives and FMEA technique to find important faults. The implementation of the proposed method has been illustrated for an existing example on the literature. The results of this method show that the proposed model has been capable of detecting the most trouble making problems with fuzzy logic and finds the most important solution strategy using FMEA technique.

Performance evaluation is one of manager & apos; s main concerns in today competitive world, which covers all aspects and dimensions of organization and it is adequately flexible and measurable. So, the necessity of performance evaluation application for organizations where their intangible assets are higher than tangible ones, such as educational institutions, is more obviously observed. Balanced scorecard (BSC) is discussed by the aim of promoting manager & apos; s decision making and directing their attention toward extensive operational vision of organization compared to traditional measurement systems, which only include the financial measures. However, BSC is a qualitative approach and has some disadvantages and its integration by other quantitative techniques such as data envelopment analysis makes it more efficient. The proposed model of this paper uses DEMATEL technique as part of BSC-DEA model to empower strategic planning. The proposed model of this paper is applied for 10 zone university branches of Islamic Azad universities to provide an appropriate road map.

Organizations with activities of all kinds are influenced by environmental conditions, and external environment is in fact the beginning point of the strategy. Strategic management is an approach resulting from fast changing age and can consider it as a view and a technique for flexible planning to fast changes, and balanced score card is regarded as one of the strong instruments in this zone. Balanced score card can truly plays an important role in all stages of strategic management and the efficiency of this model is considerably regarded in management performance evaluation in different organizations. However, strong instrument such as balance score card is hardly used because of long term dominance of political approaches in the management of Iran media organizations. This paper conceptualizes administrational trend of strategic planning by implementing balanced score card and we draw strategy map and determine performance indexes in a written media organization (Hamshahri Newspaper).