This paper presents a social work study to investigate depression and mental ability among elderly people who live in institutional elderly versus nursing home residents. The study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 345 elderly people who live on both places. The study uses Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) test where mental ability contains seven factors including “general information”, “orientation”, “mind control”, “logical memory” and “repeated figures”, “visual memory” and “learn association”. We have performed some statistical tests and the results show that there is not any meaningful difference between two groups of people in terms of mental utilization when the level of significance is five percent. However, in terms of seven scales, there are some meaningful differences on “general information” and “visual memory” between two groups. The study also shows that there is a meaningful difference between two groups of people in terms of “depression level” when the level of significance is five percent.

This paper presents a social work study on relationship between exogenous components including monthly income, family relationship and physical health and endogenous variables including subjective happiness scale (SHS), satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) and happiness. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 254 employees of private banks in city of Tehran, Iran during the year of 2012. Cronbach & apos; s Alpha and Dillon-Goldstein & apos; s Rho both are well above 0.70, for SHS and SWLS and Eigenvalue for both components were greater than one. T-student values for all components were greater than 1.96, which means they are meaningful. Mean Communalities (Ave) calculated for both Latent Variables were greater than 0.50. The results of investigating various questions of the survey indicate that while healthcare is the most important factor on happiness, there is a positive and meaningful relationship between income and family relationships and happiness.

Computer hardware business and computer equipment have been growing industry in Iran and there have been growing interests on increasing market share based on creating innovative ideas. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to find out important factors influencing this industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and using 225 experts’ feedbacks implements a structural equation modeling and extracts four factors including “agile management”, “firms’ position in business environment”, “dynamic environment” and “dynamic market”. The most important sub factors in detected items are strategic planning, market share, trade communications as well as rules and regulations.

One of the most complicated and challenging issues in today & apos; s financial managers is the relationship between the components of capital structure in terms of bonds and shares used for financing and share price of their company, and its effects on the macroeconomic variables. This research aims to study the relationship between the capital structure and performance of the production market in some firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). In this research, the index of capital structure is debt ratio and that of production market performance is sales growth and return of assets (ROA). The statistical sample of this research includes 128 companies, which have been active in 11 various industries and listed on TSE over the period 2005-2010. The statistical techniques used to test the hypotheses of this research include correlation coefficient and pooled least squares regression (panel data). Based on the results of our survey, there is a strong and significant relationship between debt ratio and return on assets among the companies listed on TSE and most industries especially based metals at the confidence level of 95%. In contrast, there is no strong and significant relationship between debt ratio and sales growth in the above-mentioned companies and in most industries.

In this survey, we have investigated whether an easy and comprehensive information technology (IT) infrastructure could contribute on auditing system in Iranian business society. The survey designs and distributes a questionnaire based on technology adoption method (TAM) among employees of bank Melli Iran who participated in our survey in Likert scale and using t-student and Kruskal-Wallis test examined different hypotheses. The results of our survey have indicated that there was a relationship between a good perception in usefulness of IT implementation and accepting recent advances of IT and auditors with good perception on IT are able to take advantage of recent advances of IT in their auditing skills. In addition, our survey has concluded that ease of IT implementation could create motivation among auditors to automate their traditional skills. While educational background played an important role on our survey, age and job experience did not have any impact on our survey.

This paper presents some findings of Indian manufacturing sectors viz. automobile (especially two-wheeler), tractor and general manufacturing industry. Various manufacturing strategy issues such as competitive priorities, improvement activities, and performance measures, have been identified and assessed in Indian context. Sector wise comparison of competitive priorities, improvement activities i.e. advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), integrated information systems (IIS), and advanced management systems (AMS), and performance measure, is provided. Our results showed that most of the Indian companies are still emphasizing on quality. However, automobile sector has set to compete globally with high innovation rate, faster new product development, and continuous improvement. It is also observed that Indian companies are investing more in AMS as compared to IIS and AMT. Manufacturing competence index is also computed for each sector.

This paper explains theoretical approach of the four theories of General system Theory (GST) developed by Yourdon (1989) [Yourdon, E. (1989). Modern Structured Analysis. Yourdon Press, Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Senge] while applying it in information technology and subsequently used by caddy (2007) [Caddy I.N., & Helou, M.M. (2007). Supply chains and their management: Application of general systems theory. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 14, 319–327.] in field of supply chain and management. JIT philosophy in core activities of supply chain i.e. procurement, production processes, and logistics are discussed through general system theory. The growing structure of the supply chain poses the implication restrictions and requires a heavy support system, many times a compromise is done while implementing JIT. The study would be useful to understand the general trends generated naturally regarding the adoption of the JIT philosophy in the supply chain.

Banks are principally in the interest earning business. The interest earning nature of banks comes with the amount of loans that banks are able to advance to their customers. To ensure that the stream of interest is not treacherous, banks must put in place stringent credit risk management practices. In this study, we investigate credit risk and default among Ghanaian banks and how these banks are coping with such pressures. Using a survey method, we found that though varied in nature, all the banks have some form of credit management procedures put in place to manage their loan portfolios. We found loan application processes to be bank specific. However, there are some common requirements that banks usually demand from customers in the process of assessing their suitability for a loan. We also found most of the credit management practices of banks to be consistent with the CAMPARI model. We recommend that the Central Bank facilitate in the establishment of a vibrant credit-referencing bureau in order to provide credit history of customers of the banks.

This paper investigates the persistence of earnings components and pricing test of abnormal changes in cash for selected firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). The proposed study gathers the necessary data from 166 firms over the period 2004-2012 from firms whose shares were actively traded on TSE market. The study uses Panel data and with the implementation of linear regression technique examines four hypotheses. The results indicate that abnormal negative changes in cash are more persistence than positive abnormal changes. In addition, both positive and negative abnormal changes are more persistence than accruals. Market also has a good perception on abnormal positive and negative changes in cash.

This study examines the relationship between the working capital management and profitability for a real-world case study in Iran over the period 2004-2012. There are three components associated with working capital including account payable period, inventory turnover period and receivable account period. The study uses cash conversion cycle to investigate the impacts of working capital management on profitability, simultaneously. We use Pearson correlation ratios as well as regression techniques to study different hypotheses. The result indicates an inverse relationship between variables of working capital and profitability. It means if account receipt, cash conversion cycle and period of debt payment increase, the profitability of this company will decrease so managers can create more value that is positive for shareholders by decreasing period of debt payment, period of inventory turnover and period of demand collection.