This paper presents an empirical investigation to rank different factors influencing on maintenance strategies on Iranian oil terminals’ company. The study determines four main factors, production quality, reliability, cost and safety. Using fuzzy analytical process, the study determines various factors associated with each main factor and ranks them by performing pair-wise comparisons. The results indicate that reliability ranks first (0.255), followed by production quality (0.252), cost (0.25) and safety (0.244). In terms of reliability, the best utilization of resources is number one priority followed by increase access to maintenance tools, reduction in production interruption are among the most important issues. In terms of production quality, reduction in system failure as well as reworks is the most important factors followed by customer satisfaction and defects. In terms of cost items, ease of access to accessories and consulting are important factors followed by necessary software, hardware and training programs. Finally, in terms of safety factors, external, internal and employee services are the most important issues, which are needed to be considered.

During the past 65 years, there have been tremendous efforts on portfolio selection problem. The standard Markowitz mean–variance model to portfolio selection includes tracing out an efficient frontier, a continuous curve demonstrating the tradeoff between return and risk. This frontier can be often detected via standard quadratic programming, categorized in convex optimization. Traditional Markowitz problem has been recently extended into a new form of mixed integer nonlinear problems by considering various constraints such as cardinality constraints, industry limitation, etc. This paper proposes a mixed integer nonlinear programming to determine optimal asset allocation on Tehran Stock Exchange. The results have indicated that a petrochemical firm named Farabi has gained 44% of the portfolio followed by a drug firm named Kosar Pharmacy gaining 28%. In addition, banking sector was the third winning firm where Eghtesad Novin bank gained nearly 10% of the portfolio. Minerals and mining firms were the next sector in our portfolio where Gol Gohar Iron Ore and Tehran Cement collected 0.73% and 0.57% of the portfolio, respectively. In our survey, auto industry gained only 0.26% of the portfolio, which belonged to Saipa group.

Today, the ability to identify the profitable customers, creating a long-term loyalty in them and expanding the existing relationships are considered as the key and competitive factors for a customer-oriented organization. The prerequisite for having such competitive factors is the presence of a very powerful customer relationship management (CRM). The accurate evaluation of customers’ profitability is considered as one of the fundamental reasons that lead to a successful customer relationship management. RFM is a method that scrutinizes three properties, namely recency, frequency and monetary for each customer and scores customers based on these properties. In this paper, a method is introduced that obtains the behavioral traits of customers using the extended RFM approach and having the information related to the customers of an organization; it then classifies the customers using the K-means algorithm and finally scores the customers in terms of their loyalty in each cluster. In the suggested approach, first the customers’ records will be clustered and then the RFM model items will be specified through selecting the effective properties on the customers’ loyalty rate using the multipurpose genetic algorithm. Next, they will be scored in each cluster based on the effect that they have on the loyalty rate. The influence rate each property has on loyalty is calculated using the Spearman’s correlation coefficient.

During the past few years, there have been tremendous changes on banking services and many bank customers are able to do their daily banking activities using recent advances of technology such as internet banking, telephone banking, etc. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation on the effects of strategic positioning for development of modern banking services. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among some 385 randomly selected people who live in Tehran in 2013. The questionnaire consists of seven factors including property positioning, advantage positioning, consumer positioning, user positioning, competitive advantage positioning, quality positioning and merchandise category positioning. Using Spearman correlation as well as stepwise regression technique, the study has determined positive and meaningful relationships between different components of strategy positioning development of modern banking services.

Tourism industry plays an essential role on development of economy and it is considered as one of green industries. Many countries try to promote investment on tourism to create various job opportunities. This paper presents an empirical investigation to rank different factors influencing on tourism industry in city of Yazd, Iran. The proposed study uses three multiple criteria decision making techniques namely, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Taxonomy to rank 40 factors. The results indicate that factors such as Being located in the center axis of communication, Strengths in transportation, The ease of access to tourism destinations and Sufficient knowledge of some historical attractions are among important factors influencing tourism industry.

This paper investigates the effects of different green marketing on brand fascination for a south Korean electronic producer, Samsung. The proposed study designs two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of green marketing and the other for brand fascination in Likert scale. Cronbach alphas for green marketing and brand fascination are calculated as 0.72 and 0.79, respectively. The study has been implemented among 385 regular customers of Samsung’s electronic devices. Using Spearman correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression analysis, the study has concluded that two components of green marketing including green product and green promotion influence positively on brand fascination, positively.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of human resources management on employee performance in one of Iranian social security organizations. The proposed study designs a questionnaire for human resources management with 23 questions consists of five components including Beneficiary groups, Long-term achievements, Situational factors, Human resources achievements and human resources achievement for measuring human resources management figures. In addition, the study uses another questionnaire consists of 37 questions for measuring organizational performance. Cronbach alpha for human resources management and organizational performance are calculated as 0.885 and 0.873, respectively. Using Pearson correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression technique, the study detects a positive and meaningful relationship between human resources management and organizational performance.

This study aims to identify and to classify Open book accounting (OBA) dimensions according to inter-organizational cost management (IOCM). The study selects six university professors in the field of accounting and by studying the theoretical literature and conducted investigations inside and outside of the country, the OBA dimensions were identified and then they were classified by analytical hierarchy process technique. According to the studies and experts’ ideas, four dimensions including nature of data and accounting data disclosure practices, uses of disclosed accounting data, conditions of OBA, cost implementation of OBA were identified as OBA dimensions. The results of our survey indicate that the form of data disclosure as well as coordination and planning among team members played essential role for OBA development. In addition, trust and the cost of the second party were other important factors, which must be considered when OBA is applied in any industry.

This paper studies the effect of organizational citizenship behavior on perceptions of service quality in city of Tehran, Iran in 2013. The study considers the behavior of citizens in terms of five perspectives including altruism, generosity, loyalty, social customs and courtesy. The study selects 229 regular employees of this municipality organization and applies a questionnaire designed in Likert scale. The results of Pearson correlation test as well as stepwise regression technique indicate that there were positive and meaningful relationships between organizational citizenship behavior including Altruism, (B = 0.445, Sig. =0.043), Social Customs, (B = 0.395, Sig. = 0.000), Generosity (B = 0.299, Sig. = 0.000), Loyalty (B = 0.193, Sig. =0.000) and Courtesy (B = 1.221, Sig. =0.000) and perceptions of service quality.

This paper characterizes the stockholders overreaction thorough return and price mean reverting behavior in specified ten major industry groups in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). For investigation of mean reversion presence, we use corporate firms from ten specified industry groups traded on the Tehran Stock Exchange and using a random walk with drift model with data over the period 2009-2013 period and recursive estimation in stability diagnostics test. The primary objective of this paper is to investigate mean reversion phenomenon in ten major industries including maximum number of real and nonstrategic investors with two different methods on quarterly return and monthly price time series. The results indicate that mean reversion occurred in the returns of these industry group. In addition, we use two major Unit Root Tests as complementary and final analysis. Out results also indicate that mean reversion takes place, significantly in eight industry groups and price time series in two industry groups follow a random walk process.