Nowadays enterprises should consider seeking to reduce the supply chain risks as a crucial part of their activities in order to improve their competitiveness in the international context. Choosing the suitable strategy in connection with assigning some parts of the production process to outside the organization is a complex multi-criteria decision making problem and it gets more complicated when supply chain risk factors as the factors to select the strategy as well as dependence and the close ties between these criteria also be considered. In this paper, after the identification of risks in the supply chain of a medical equipment manufacturer company, dependence and ties between criteria in line with choosing the best strategy among existing alternatives has been examined in the form of a combined ANP-ELECTRE method. This combined model is of high performance to give a solution to the problem considered in this paper. But given the complex and time consuming nature of the AHP and ELECTRE, in this study a meta-heuristic algorithm is developed called SIMANP that despite the simplicity of computing and high-speed, is good in the terms of precision and efficiency. The results of comparing SIMANP algorithm and the proposed ANP - ELECTRE method are presented at the end.

In this study, the behavior of two buildings designed with steel structures Buckling Restrained Braced (BRB) and conventional bending frame was studied to analyze their strengths against progressive collapse. The structures were designed and analyzed in accordance with Iranian regulation No. 2800 for the design of buildings. Using nonlinear static pushover analysis, the performance of the structure after removal of the center and the corner columns were investigated and it was demonstrated that removing the corner column provides more critical conditions for the investigated buildings. Furthermore, the use of BRB elements provides better performance for the analyzed buildings due to the ability of BRB in absorbing and dissipating more energy induced from the external loading sources like the earthquake.

This article presents a broad review of Hub location problem (HLP), and its applications. The goal of this article is to provide a review on the newest and most recent publications on Hub location and its application in real world practices since 2013. While, there are some articles which reviewed hub location problem literature but some models were not covered in those articles. In this paper, we try to include capacitated models. We survey advances in analysis and modeling of the hub location problem including its variants and solution algorithm of HLPs. We emphasize the most applicable areas for Marine Transpiration. We show that first, majority of the articles consider network domain, while there are some articles which execute HLP in discrete and continuous domain. Also, the capacitated case attracts more attention in recent years. Finally, the contribution of any type of HLP in the literature is shown schematically.

The aim of this study is to establish a framework for measuring and managing credit risk for fifteen leasing companies in Iran. An analysis on the influence of internal factors on credit performance will then be performed. This will enable a leasing industry to progress towards its goals and objectives in the most direct and effective way. Credit risk consists of probability of non-return. This may be in the form of bankruptcy or a decrease in financial and credit situation of the lessee. We can assume a correlated market and credit risk. The variables are extracted from the Central Bank of Kanoon Leasing Association in Iran. Numerical analysis reveals that lessee credit risk can have a substantial impact on a lease term structure.

Web services have become quite popular over the last few years as they allow easier development and integration of business applications. In this paper, we consider a web service pricing problem where two providers compete through dynamic pricing. Each provider offers access to a web service with different quality classes where users may buy their required web service through a reservation system. They would like to adjust the prices of their web services over a pre-specified time horizon to manage demand and to maximize profit. Users have the right with no obligation to cancel their services as long as they pay a penalty. We consider a dynamic setting where the web service classes share a capacity. We first develop a time continuous model for competitive pricing of a web service and then we provide some insights about the equilibrium condition of the problem using open-loop differential game and propose an algorithm to obtain the optimal pricing policy for providers. Moreover, we conduct numerical analyses to examine the impacts of some parameters on control and state variables.

This paper presents a study to measure the effects of return on investment, sales growth rate, volatility investment, cash flow and structure of institutional shareholders on the ratio of debt to equities. The study selects 102 firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange and, using regression technique with Panel data, examines five different hypotheses over the period 2008-2012. The results indicate that there was a negative and meaningful relationship between return of investment and the ratio of debt to equities and a positive and meaningful relationship between sales growth and the ratio of debt to equities. Moreover, there were positive and meaningful relationships between volatility of investment as well as cash flow and the ratio of debt to equities. Finally, the survey has indicated that there was a negative and meaningful relationship between the structure of institutional shareholders and the ratio of debt to equities.

This paper presents a study to measure the effects of culture and strategic orientation on service innovation capabilities on selected banks in province of Alborz, Iran. The survey uses a questionnaire consists of 40 questions where 5 questions are associated with service innovation, 11 questions are related to strategic orientation and 24 questions measures organizational culture. Cronbach alpha for service innovation capabilities, strategic orientation and organizational culture were 0.73, 0.84 and 0.91, respectively. Using structural equation modeling as well as regression technique, the study has determined that organizational culture influences positively on structural orientation (B = 0.6, t-value = 13.56), organizational culture influences positively on service innovation capability (B = 0.43, t-value = 8.73) and finally structural orientation influences positively on service innovation capability (B = 0.35, t-value = 7.22).

Liquidity of the stock exchanges plays essential role on investment decisions and it is one of the factors that may influence on stock price. The easier one can buy/sell shares of a firm, the higher liquidity the firm has. In fact, lack of liquidity may lead investors to sell their assets at cheaper prices and it could influence negatively on overall market. The primary objective of this paper is to study the effect of stock liquidity on the risk of falling stock prices. The study chooses historical information of 70 selected firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2006-2012. The results of this survey have indicated that there was a negative and meaningful relationship between stock liquidity and stock price decline.

The aim of this study is to learn the effects of the value at risk (VaR) and the index of 30 largest companies (TEFIX 30) on the index of 30 large firms’ prices listed on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). This research study is based on analysis of libraries and analytical panel data and proposes a regression function where the index of 30 large companies’ prices is a linear function of VaR and TEFIX 30. The study collects the information of 90 publicly traded TSE firms over the period 2011-2013. The results have indicated that while the index of 30 large companies’ prices had a meaningful relationship with VaR but it had no meaningful relationship with TEFIX 30.

This study presents an empirical investigation to study the post-war tourism in sought west region of Iran. This region is the host of many Iranian who wish remember the events of War between Iran and Iraq. Many high school or university students travel to the region through cultural as well as religious communities. This paper tries to analyze the challenges facing these people when they travel to province of Khozestan, Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some randomly selected people who visited the region. The implementation of Pearson correlation test has determined that “Weakness of tourism infrastructure facilities and services” is to be blamed the most followed by “Underdevelopment of decision making centers”. Moreover, path analysis has been implemented to detect direct and indirect effects of different factors on development of tourism in the region. In our survey, marketing, culture and weakness in infrastructures have been determined the most important factors influencing on development of the region.