The dependence of various stock markets plays a vital role in diversification while selecting securities in an investor’s portfolio. This study examines interdependence among the East Asian stock markets in relation to the Karachi Stock Exchange. Monthly data ranging from 2000 to 2010 is included and tested in this paper. This relationship is tested by using descriptive statistics and correlation matrix. Data stationarity is ensured by Unit Root Test. Evidence from Granger Causality and Impulse Response Test prove no relationship between KSE and stock markets of the East Asian countries while there exists certain level of unidirectional relationship from Japan to China and from Japan to Pakistan.

Measuring the relative efficiency is one of the most important issues among hospitals in today & apos; s economy. These days, we hear that cost reduction is a necessity for survival of business owners and one primary to reduce the expenditures is to increase relative efficiency. The proposed study of this paper first uses output oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the relative efficiencies of nine hospitals. The proposed model uses four types of employee namely specialists, physicians, technicians and other staffs as input parameters. The model also uses the number of surgeries, hospitalized and radiography as the outputs of the proposed model. Since the implementation of DEA leads us to have more than one single efficient unit, we implement supper efficiency technique to measure the relative efficiency of efficient units.

Information technology plays an important role on increasing productivity in many organizations. The primary objective of the present survey is to study the impact of information technology on productivity and find a positive and significant relationship between these two factors. Structural equations technique and LISREL software are used for analysis of the questionnaires distributed among managers and some employees of Iran Behnoush Company. Organizations try to improve their performance by investment in information technology. However, many of the previous studies indicate insignificance of the impact of information technology on productivity of the organizations. The present survey studies the impact of information technology on organizations & apos; productivity through the collected data from the above company. Results confirm existence of a positive relationship between information technology and productivity.

Information technology plays an important role on increasing internal control in many organizations. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the impact of information technology, hiring high quality skilled management team, using high quality standards and increasing employees & apos; awareness on managing internal control. The survey uses a questionnaire based on Likert scale and distributes among the people who work in either administration or financial sectors of governmental agencies in province of Zanjan, Iran. The results of the study indicate that the implementation of information technology positively influences management team to control their system, more effectively, using more skilled and specialized managers positively influences management internal control, an organization with suitable standard positively influences management internal control and increasing employees & apos; awareness positively influences management internal control.

Satellite channels play an important role on building a connection among people with the same nationality who live in different parts of the world. The primary question is on how to serve various people with appropriate programs. In this paper, we present an empirical study among 310 audiences of satellite channels. The results show that the demographic characteristics of the audiences including age, gender, and education significantly influence the level of gratification with the satellite channels. From the cognitive perspective, they consider the satellite channels as tools for increasing their knowledge and from an emotional perspective; they consider these channels as enjoyable, entertaining and interesting.

There are many evidences to believe that customers select their products based on brand name. Products also maintain their own characteristics, which make them differentiable from others. In this paper, we present an empirical study to determine important factors influencing customers & apos; purchasing intend for cellular phones in capital city of Iran, Tehran. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire consists of 16 questions and distribute them among 428 people. The results of the study show that there are some positive relationships between exclusive name and quality perception, between exclusive name and word of mouth advertisement, between quality perception and fidelity, between word of mouth advertisement and brand name and between brand name image and brand name.

Today, development of economic activity and employment is known as an effective strategy for economical and social development of the countries. Entrepreneurship in Iran is also as the most executive and practical strategy to exit the economical and social deadlock and problems. However, entrepreneurship development needs identifying and removing existed obstacles and problems. There are a lot of researches about obstacles and restrictions on entrepreneurship but, to the best of our knowledge, there is no research to identify vital factors and degree of their effect on the network of factors. In this paper using DEMATEL technique, the entrepreneurial barriers in the industry of Iran are categorized in 2 groups of cause and effect. We also use fuzzy concept to handle any ambiguity on the feedbacks gathered from decision makers. To achieve this purpose, at first using views of professors and active managers in the field of entrepreneurial and also related books and using Delphi technique, 9 vital factors are identified and they are analyzed in two groups of internal and external obstacles in the industrial sector of Iran. The research chooses 100 most active companies in one of the industrial poles of Iran for the proposed study of this paper. Furthermore, questionnaires are distributed among the top managers of these companies, to analyze the barriers in entrepreneurship in the industry. The results show that two factors of "kind of management" and "organizational structure" are the most important factors. In addition, “legal obstacles" and" optimum use of financial resources” are at the highest degree of impression on business units.

Nowadays technology transfer is considered as the process of sharing skills, expertise, knowledge and technologies either among government and institutions or between transferee and transferor enterprises. Using scientific investigations and real-world instances of practice, this study tries to show the importance of technology transfer and its role in societal development. Applying the views of the related literature and using a dynamic system approach and experts & apos; opinions, this study is supposed to determine positive and negative relations among different components of social development and technology transfer which are namely the parts of technological give and takes.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of integer data in data envelopment analysis (DEA). The inputs and outputs in different types of DEA are considered to be continuous. In most application-oriented problems, some or all data are integers; and subsequently, the continuous condition of the values is omitted. For example, situations in which the inputs/outputs are representatives of the number of cars, people, etc. In fact, the benchmark unit is artificial and does not contain integer inputs/outputs after projection on the efficiency frontier. By rounding off the projection point, we may lose the feasibility or end up having inefficient DMU. In such cases, it is required to provide a benchmark unit such that the considered unit reaches the efficiency. In the present short communication, by proposing a novel algorithm, the projecting of an inefficient DMU is carried out in such a way that produced benchmarking takes values with fully integer inputs/outputs.

Balanced scorecard is a performance appraisal method planned for measuring the organizational efficiency to develop their strategies. Organization’s strategies in a specified period are the main inputs in this model. Furthermore, due to nature, experts & apos; opinions play the vital role in determining the strategies. In this research, the proposed algorithm is designed by using fuzzy set covering problem and non-linear multiple objective integer programming (zero and one variables), so that it can be useful to choose the best combination of strategies for specified period of time with the least deviation in experts` opinions. The presented model is carried out in Islamic Azad University, Semnan Branch. The results indicate that the designed model can provide the best combination of strategies for entering into the balanced scorecard system.