The purpose of this paper is to measure the relative efficiencies of various cow husbandries. The proposed model of this paper uses distribution free analysis to measure the performance of different units responsible for taking care of cows. We gather the necessary information of all units including number of cows, amount of internet usage, number of subunits for taking care of cows, amount of forage produced in each province for grazing livestock and average hour per person training courses as independent variables and consider the amount of produced milk as dependent variable. The necessary information are collected from all available units located in different provinces of Iran and the production function is estimated using a linear programming model. The results indicate that the capital city of Iran, Tehran, holds the highest technical efficiency, the lowest efficiency belongs to province of Ilam and other provinces mostly performs poorly.

Through outsourcing, a company can expand and develop its sources and capacities by accessing to higher quality services and better functionality. This paper deals with the perception of the managers of the telecommunication industry sector on the effects of outsourcing on operational strategy and especially on the issues associated with cost reduction, developed quality, flexibility and better service. Because of the importance of the strategic feature of outsourcing, we examined its effects on the organizational function of the telecommunication industries. This study shows that managers believe that outsourcing has a great impact not only on the cost reduction but also on other goals of operational strategies, which makes outsourcing become inherently more strategic. In addition, it seems that outsourcing influences function noticeably. In the present research, the relationships between propensity to outsourcing and operational objectives and organizational performance in telecommunication industries are assessed. The aim of this research is to examine the propensity to outsourcing and its impacts on operational objectives including cost reduction, improved quality, flexibility and better service and organizational performance, which includes financial performance and non-financial performance. In the research, data are collected through field research and questionnaires. The questionnaires are distributed among the board of directors, quality managers, operational administrators, and lower managers and then the feedbacks are analyzed using SPSS and Minitab software based on deductive and descriptive statistics.

Performance evaluation is one of the most important techniques to prioritize different decision making units. Data envelopment analysis (DEA), as a non-parametric method, plays an important role for measuring relative efficiency. Balanced score card, on the other hand, is another method to evaluate a business plan based on non-financial perspectives. The integrated BSC-DEA takes advantage of the advantages of both methods & apos; features. In this paper, we propose a BSC-DEA method to rank different decision making units. We consider different financial criteria such as profit-margin, return on assets along with non-financial criteria such as customer satisfaction, advanced services, employee skills to compare the performance of different banks. The results are analyzed and discussed, which could be used for making better decisions.

With the increasing importance and the role that websites play in all aspects of life, more and more web development projects are being undertaken by companies. One of the key decisions in which both short-term and long-term success of the project depends is choosing the right development platform. Its criticality can be judged by the fact that once a platform is chosen, one has to live with it throughout the software development life cycle. The entire shape of the project depends on the language, operating system, tools, frameworks etc., in short the web development platform chosen. In addition, choosing the right platform is a multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. We propose a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process model to solve the MCDM problem. We try to tap the real-life modeling potential of fuzzy logic and conjugate it with the commonly used powerful AHP modeling method.

The main aim of this study is to assess the physical work capacity of bricklayers with focus on the energy expenditure during work. Eighty Nine bricklayers’ working on various sites in Ibadan and Eruwa towns of Oyo State, Nigeria are used for the study. Correlation and regression analysis using SPSS 16.0 Statistical Package was used to determine the relationship between VO2 given the age and weight of the subjects; % RHR(Relative Heart Rate) and working heart rate (HRW) given weight; VO2 and %RHR given Body Mass Index (BMI).
The results showed that the mean energy expenditure of bricklaying was 1.5l/min of oxygen (7.23Kcal/min, using a conversion factor of 4.82) which classified bricklaying as “heavy work”. A rest allowance of 64.45% (38.67 minutes rest for 60 minutes work duration) was calculated.
It was concluded that there is a need to redesign the work content of the aforementioned occupation in order to reduce excessive strain on the workers, which in turn will increase productivity.

Motivation is one of the most important factors influencing workers & apos; productivity. An increase in workers & apos; motivation could add more value to organizations & apos; structure and influence the profitability, significantly. In this paper, we study different factors on demotivating workers using questionnaire consist of various questions. The questionnaire is distributed among some employees who work for rubber production units located in Esfahan, Iran. The results of this survey indicate that discrimination on annual job compensation, entrusting responsibilities and unpleasant relationship with family partner are some of the most important factors influencing employees & apos; motivation. While financial factors play important role on increasing employees & apos; motivation, non-financial factors are considered more important.

Sugar is one of the strategic goods in the basket of households in each country and it plays an
important role in supplying the required energy. On the other hand, it is one of the goods, which
Iranian government is about to change its subsidy strategies. To design useful sugar subsidy
strategies, it is necessary to know sugar position in the basket of households and be familiar
with households & apos; sugar demand or consumption behavior. This research estimates sugar demand
for Iranian households by using time series of 1984-2008, which is taken from central bank of
Iran. In this paper, first independent and dependent variables of household sugar demand
model are chosen based on the literature review and theory of demand. Then, sugar demand is
estimated by OLS technique and linear regression. The preliminary statistical observations such
as Durbin-Watson, F statistic and R2 indicate that the regression is admissible. The results seem
plausible and consistent with theory and show that sugar demand in Iranian households is
associated with household expenditure, relative sugar price, family size and indicate that
demand of sugar is affected during the war time. The results also show the income elasticity is
0.8 and price elasticity is -0.2 which means sugar is essential good for Iranian households and is
inelastic to price.

Service quality plays an important role in health care systems since hospitals are responsible for people & apos; s lives. This study presents an effective approach for evaluating and comparing service qualities of four hospitals. Service quality consists of different attributes and many of them are intangible and difficult to measure. Therefore, we propose a fuzzy method to resolve the ambiguity of the concepts, which are associated with human judgments. SERVQUAL model is used to evaluate the respondents & apos; judgments of service quality and multi attribute decision making approach is implemented for the comparison among hospitals. The paper use analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for obtaining criteria weight and TOPSIS for ranking the cases.

One of the most important issues on revenue management in banking industries is the assignment of loan to customers. In fact, a big portion of banks' revenue is from loan assignment and choosing appropriate customers for loan assignment not only reduces the financial risk but also it can increase the revenue. In this study, we perform an empirical study to find out whether customers' financial statements could provide enough information about customers for loan assignment. The other objective of this study is to find out whether banks' officials could understand about the details of customers' financial statements. Finally, we want to find out whether there is any relationship between unpaid loans and customers' credit rating. The present study is executed on an Iranian bank by distributing a questionnaire analyzing the results. The results indicate that there are some strong evidence that financial statement could help bank official determine customers' credit rating. The survey also concludes that highly education and experienced employees are the best people for devoting best credit rating for customers.