Previous studies in the area of earnings forecasts hold a common characteristic, they make no distinction as to the economic cycle when evaluating voluntary earnings disclosures. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between actual as well as forecasted earnings and growth domestic product during the economic growth and recession on Tehran Stock Exchange. Using the information of 60 firms over the period of 2007-2012, the study has determined that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between earnings forecast and growth domestic product during economic growth. In addition, the study has determined a meaningful relationship between actual earnings and growth domestic product during the recession.

In this paper, we address the management’s decision making process and examine the effect of accounting information system (AIS) in PARS GARMA holding organization in making sound and effective decisions and inform the reader on how AIS influences on the management decisions in 6 major perspectives including quality, accuracy, economic, validity, speed and on time concepts. The major source of data to this research is primary data through the administration of questionnaires. Regression and correlation analysis was used for the data analysis. The findings show that accounting information system had a significant and positive role in PARS GARMA holding management decisions process in several perspectives but AIS had no significant impact on speed of decision making.

A multitude of techniques fall under the domain of Multi- Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) which is used to select the best alternative among the available ones. The objective of this paper is to compare some of these techniques with respect to the problem of selection of 3D printers, which is associated with multiple attributes. The weights of the criteria were determined using analytical network process (ANP). Next, the alternatives were ranked using three different MCDM techniques- 1.TOPSIS which ranks alternatives having the shortest distance to the ideal solution as well as the greatest distance from the negative-ideal solution 2. Deng’s Similarity based Approach where the most preferred alternative should have the highest degree of similarity to the positive ideal solution and the lowest degree of similarity to the negative-ideal solution and 3.PROMETHEE and GAIA. The solutions for each of these three cases were analyzed thoroughly, and reasons for any deviations were discussed.

Information and communication technology plays essential role for people’s day-to-day business activities. People receive most of their knowledge by processing, recording and transferring necessary information through surfing Internet websites. Internet as an essential part of information technology (IT) has grown remarkably. Nowadays, there have been significant amount of efforts in Iran for developing e-commerce. This paper studies the effects of environmental internet features on internet purchase intention. The study divides internet environment into demographic and technologic parts and, for studying each of them, many features are investigated such as internet connection speed, connectivity model, web browser, type of payments, user’s income, user’s education, user’s gender, frequency of online usage per week and users’ goal for using internet. Using Logistic regression technique, the study has determined a meaningful effects of income, education, connection type, browser and goal on consumers’ behavior.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of quality of earnings forecasts in predicting stock returns on 121 selected firms traded on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2009-2013. The study investigates the effects of three year means of earnings forecast accuracy on investors’ investment decisions in terms of volume and time horizon, i.e. short term and long term investment sentiment. Using some regression analysis, the study has determined a positive and meaningful relationship between the quality of earnings forecast and investment time horizon. However, the study did not find any meaningful relationship between earnings forecast accuracy and volume of investment.

During the past few years, there have been growing changes on managing different projects using the idea of agile manufacturing by moving from the idea of plan to planning. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study whether it is possible to apply the idea of agile in mass construction projects in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 35 well-known contractors in the field of construction projects. The questionnaire consists of 8 questions, which is considered in terms of four perspectives including culture, projects, tools and processes and employee. Using some statistical test, the study has determined that it would be possible to apply the idea of agile contractors to promote mass housing contractors.

This paper proposes an application of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to help decision maker evaluate different processes to identify the weaknesses of an automobile car service where the best alternatives and critical success factors are identified to improve their performances against the market leader. The proposed benchmarking process may help provide effective systematic decision support tool. Thus the endeavor has been made for car service industry to exhibit proposed framework by applying AHP to enhance its competitiveness. The proposed study provides an opportunity to apply to other industries in addition with a diminutive alteration.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine the key criteria that viral marketing practitioners believe should be implemented to measure about the success of viral marketing campaigns in insurance industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale where the effects of four independent variables, personal, message, media and tools characteristics are measured on an Iranian insurance firm’s reputation as well as service expansion. Cronbach alphas were measured for all components of the survey and they were all well above the minimum acceptable level. Using regression analysis, the study has determined positive and meaningful relationships between insurance firm’s reputation as well as service expansion and four independent variables.

The agricultural Jahad organization of Khorasan and Razavi province is one of Iran’s biggest agricultural firms, which is responsible in agricultural sector of the province. During the past few years, there has been a growth in organization’s responsibilities and the number of employees has increased. This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine different methods for increasing employees’ efficiency. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 20 questions, distributes it among 127 randomly selected employees who worked for this organization. Cronbach alphas for all components of the survey were calculated well above 0.70, which validate the overall questionnaire and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test has indicated that the data were normally distributed. Using t-student test, the study has confirmed three approaches for increasing efficiency including methods to improve employee management and organizational structures, methods to improve financial and moral encouragement system and methods for improvement of staff performance efficiency assessment.

In highly competitive markets, building brand equity has become one of the first priorities for many organizations as it brings several benefits and reputation for them. Past researches have acknowledged that consumers look for brands which provide them with differential values through innovative product and service features. However, despite the importance of product innovation in determining an organization’s success, very limited studies have intended to examine its effect on brand equity. In the present study, we aim to examine the effect of product innovation on brand equity in Malaysian automotive market. The data were collected from 287 passenger cars owners through self-administered questionnaire at several shopping malls in northern Malaysia. The findings revealed that product innovation had significant positive effect on overall brand equity and its dimensions namely; brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand image, and brand leadership. Based on the results of this study, several implications are discussed to enlighten our knowledge on important innovation activities that could develop favorable brand equity. Finally, limitations and future research suggestions are highlighted to gain better insights on brand equity development.