Population growth and rapid urbanization growth in recent decades have not only led to unbalanced physical expansion of cities, but also contributed to growth and development of cities. The city of Sari in Iran, like many other cities is not immune from these changes. The city population has increased by 16 times over the last fifty years. Therefore, the increasing population growth has created uncontrolled physical expansion in the city. In order to prevent these inefficiencies of urban problems, the present study was accomplished to determine the factors influencing the process of expanding the city of Sari and to find out some solutions to fix and prevent this process. The method used in this study, descriptive–analytical method, to data analysis and Heldern and Shannon entropy model were used. The results show that: 82% of the physical growth of the city during the period 1977-2005 was related to the population growth and the remaining 18 percent, was associated with the horizontal growth. The city sprawl, the metropolitan area of the city had denser structure and the surrounding areas had a more dispersed structure. Also the effects of synthetic and natural factors restricting the city of Sari physical development made the city exorbitance horizontal and linearly developed. According to the findings that could help prevent the horizontal development of the city, it could be said that we could make the city vertically developed rather than horizontal expansion, improvement and renovation of old texture of implementation and more use of the land, filling the empty spaces.

This research aims to study factors influencing the adoption of internet shopping by Iranian consumers by integrating task technology fit (TTF) model and the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT). The statistical population includes consumers in capital city of Iran, Tehran, who have had at least one experience of internet shopping. The data were collected through questionnaire. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed and 392 usable questionnaires were returned. SPSS statistical software was used for data analysis .The results show that except for effort expectation, there was a significant and positive relationship between other variables (task technology fit, performance expectation, social impact and facilitating conditions) and internet shopping. In addition, the findings also indicated a significant effect of task features and technology features on task technology fit.

Herbal Products industry has experienced significant growth in product demand. Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors effecting the actual buying of Herbal Product. This study also examines the moderation effect of perceived risk on the relationship between product safety and intention. Mall intercept survey was used to collect data from six various states in Malaysia. The data is analyzed using Partial Least Squares (PLS) path modeling. The path coefficient results supported the direct influence of intention on actual buying. Similarly, the findings reveal that perceived risk moderate the relationship between product safety and buying intention.

This paper analyzes the factors of FDI inflows in ASEAN countries over the period 1991 to 2009. The results indicate that the market size, trade openness, quality infrastructure, human capital, labor productivity are the main factors that have positive impacts on FDI inflows. Additionally, exchange rate policy, real interest rate, political risk and corruption also affect FDI inflows. Surprisingly, the cheap labor does not help to attract FDI to the region, because foreign investors are particularly interested in labor productivity. This study also shows that the Asian financial crisis in 1997 affected the amount of FDI inflows, but not on the nature of FDI inflows in the region.

This paper examines the association between voluntary disclosure, earnings announcement lag and the cost of debt in Hong Kong. The research sample consists of 20 listed companies in the Hong Kong Stock exchange over the period spanning from 2008 to 2011. A disclosure checklist is used to measure the extent of voluntary disclosure in companies ‘annual reports. Earnings announcement lag is proxied by the difference between the end of fiscal year and the publication date of financial statements. Results of this study confirm that voluntary disclosure and earnings announcements lag reduce the cost of debt in Hong Kong. These findings suggest that voluntary disclosures play an essential role in reducing cost of debt in Hong Kong context, and managers tend to disclose in early manner to reduce the information asymmetry between their firm and creditors. These findings may have policy implications for managers since they demonstrate that the extent of voluntary and timely disclosures affect the cost of debt.

This paper aims to examine the joint impact of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP systems) and Non Financial Performance Indicators (NFPI) on corporate financial performance. Our study is based on a comparative analysis between firms that adopt ERP only, firms that use NFPI only and firms that combining both strategies (ERP and NFPI) during the period from 2001 to 2006.The implementation process remains highly uncertain. In fact, the use of Non Financial performance indicators is an important determinant of corporate financial performance. At the operational level, combining ERP systems with NFPI reflects a long-term business strategy to improve business process. In summary, the ERP and NFPI literatures demonstrate the vital importance of aligning business process, information technologies and key performance indicators with the strategic objectives of the firm. Results support the hypothesis in which firms that combining ERP and NFPI have significantly higher ROA than either ERP-only or NFPI-only firms.

Since strategy planning describes organization strategy and helps people understand it, it has a significant role in strategic management by drawing cause-and-effect relations; this plan provides the management more power to correct administrating of strategies. In this paper, Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) approach is used to produce a strategic planning for tile and ceramic industry. In the method introduced in this paper, after identifying the key measure of function assessment in case study of tile and ceramic by using ISM stages, cause-and-effect relations among the measures have been identified and finally the diagraph which is the strategic plans in four dimensions (BSC) has been drawn.

The safety of civil aviation will be more secured if the errors in all the facets can be reduced. Like the other industrial sectors, human resource is one of the most complex and sensitive resources for the civil aviation. The error of human resources can cause fatal disasters. In these days, a good volume of researches have been conducted on the disaster of civil aviation. The researchers have identified the causes of the civil aviation disasters from various perspectives. They identified the areas where more concern is needed to reduce the disastrous impacts. This paper aims to find out the critical factors of human error in civil aviation in a developing country (Bangladesh) as it is accepted that human error is one of main causes of civil aviation disasters. The paper reviews the previous research to find out the critical factors conceptually. Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) has been used to find out the critical factors systematically. Analyses indicate that the concentration on precondition for unsafe acts (including sub-factors) is required to ensure the aviation safety.

This paper concentrates on the evaluation of reliability measures of a computer system of two-identical units having independent failure of h/w and s/w components. Initially one unit is operative and the other is kept as spare in cold standby. There is a single server visiting the system immediately whenever needed. The server conducts preventive maintenance of the unit after a maximum operation time. If server is unable to repair the h/w components in maximum repair time, then components in the unit are replaced immediately by new one. However, only replacement of the s/w components has been made at their failure. The priority is given to the preventive maintenance over repair activities of the h/w. The time to failure of the components follows negative exponential distribution whereas the distribution of preventive maintenance, repair and replacement time are taken as arbitrary. The expressions for some important reliability measures of system effectiveness have been derived using semi-Markov process and regenerative point technique. The graphical behavior of the results has also been shown for a particular case.

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a decision making tool based on linear programming for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of comparable units. DEA helps us identify the sources and level of inefficiency for each of the inputs and outputs. This approach has been used to evaluate the efficiency of the safety department in five construction companies. A three-input, safety workforce, safety training, and safety budget, and two-output, Perfect days and Uptime, constant returns-to-scale (CRS) model was developed. The model indicated the necessary improvements required in the inefficient unit’s inputs and outputs to make it efficient, by identifying what factor is responsible for the low efficiency of performance, and also what factor should be improved in order to improve the efficiency of the safety department. The result shows that the safety department of firm A, B and D are efficient, but Firm C and Firm E can improve their efficiency by reducing inputs up to 3.34% and 6.05%, respectively. The inputs identified for reduction were; number of safety staffs and safety budget for Firm C and E respectively.