The current paper deals with incomplete Pairwise Comparisons (‘PWs’) when a large number of alternatives is evaluated. PWs are used to quantify decision maker's preferences, both ordinal and cardinal, in multi-criteria decision-making settings for eliciting the priorities of alternative options or weights of criteria. We use additive PWs with a different scale and show how 2-diagonal samples are used to deduce the implied weights thus prioritizing the alternatives. As a consequence, the number of PWs in incomplete judgment decision matrices is greatly reduced while preserving consistency and quality of the results. Computational results are provided and an example from the literature is applied to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.

The aim of this paper is to examine the possible association between the effectiveness of Board of Directors (BOD) and firm performance (FP). For the purpose of this analysis, data is derived from firms listed in the materials sector of the Saudi Exchange Market’s Tadawul All Share Index (TASI). Using pooled OLS regression analysis and the dependent variables of ROA and ROE as a proxy for FP, while board meetings (BMEET), independence and board size (BSIZE) are used as explanatory variables, the results reveal that frequent BMEET may not lead to improved FP. Moreover, the results show that BMEET frequency is negatively associated with FP. Independent members do not provide additional efficiency leading to better FP. As for the BSIZE, the findings indicate that larger boards are associated with lower FP. Such findings offer insights into the effect of BSIZE on FP. The results are of interest to decision makers, policymakers and investors.

The cardiac output and stroke volume of a healthy person was estimated using a 3D fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation coupled with an echocardiogram Doppler (echo-Doppler) during exercising and resting. The geometry, dimensions, and blood flow through the aortic valve were measured using the echo-Doppler. A 3D FSI simulation was modeled using an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian mesh. The 3D FSI cardiac output and stroke volume results were 15.4% lower than Doppler results when brachial pressures applied with differences between brachial, central, and left ventricular pressures. While without considering these brachial pressures differences, the discrepancy between the FSI cardiac output and stroke volume results with Doppler increased to 22.3% and 26.2%, respectively. Eventually, the comparisons of the 3D FSI results and clinical measurements demonstrated that numerical methods can be a potential computational tool to estimate cardiac output and stroke volume for different heart rates when they coupled with the clinical measurements.

Road accidents as a global challenge, imposing irreparable financial and human life losses in almost all countries, especially in developing countries, annually. According to world health organization (WHO), if this trend continues, road accidents will become the 7th cause of human death by 2030. Thus, road safety policy makers have been trying to use safety promotion and preventative actions. In this paper, the road safety performance of Iranian provinces is studied. To evaluate road safety efficiency scores, data envelopment analysis based on road safety (DEA-RS) method in two deterministic and non-deterministic situations is used. To consider the uncertainty in input and output data, this paper develops credibility DEA-RS (CreDEA-RS) model. In fact, the constraints of DEA-RS model are considered as credibility constraints and a counterpart credibility DEA-RS (CreDEA-RS) model is proposed for evaluating road safety of provinces of Iran. According to the results, provinces located in mountainous and forest areas such as Gilan had a much weaker performance than provinces in desert areas such as Yazd.

The study explores the effect of management quality of accounting information system outputs on customer satisfaction in Saudi Arabia commercial banks. In the presentation of the data and the theoretical approach, the descriptive approach was adopted in evaluating the findings of the study aimed at knowing the effect of the consistency of the outputs of the accounting information system on the satisfaction of customers in the KSA commercial banks. Clients of commercial banks working in the KSA are the sample population. The research survey was a random sample involving 600 respondents from clients. The findings of the regression analysis revealed a statistically important reliability effect, where the value of (P) 463,384 was less than (0.00) in statistical terms, and this was verified by the (T) test. This means that stability as an aspect of the consistency of the performance of the accounting information system and the degree of customer satisfaction with the operating banks have a positive impact. A crucial research challenge in the consistency of literature on the quality accounting information system (QAIS) relates to the capacity of management accounting systems (MAS) to offer information that lets managers make smarter choices. Many scholars have advocated the use of more modern (QAIS) over the last decades.

A vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is an important problem with many real applications in a transportation problem. The optimum set of routes with the minimum distance and vehicles used is determined to deliver goods from a central depot, using a vehicle with capacity constraint. In the real cases, there are other objective functions that should be considered. This paper considers not only the minimum distance and the number of vehicles used as the objective function, the customer’s satisfaction with the priority of customers is also considered. Additionally, it presents a new model for a bi-objective VRPTW solved by a revised multi-choice goal programming approach, in which the decision maker determines optimistic aspiration levels for each objective function. Two meta-heuristic methods, namely simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithm (GA), are proposed to solve large-sized problems. Moreover, the experimental design is used to tune the parameters of the proposed algorithms. The presented model is verified by a real-world case study and a number of test problems. The computational results verify the efficiency of the proposed SA and GA.

Cracks are one of the main causes of structural failure and they develop in the structures due to various reasons such as fatigue, temperature variation, excessive load, cyclic load, environmental effects, impact loading etc. Thus, structural health monitoring is necessary to avoid risks, damages and failures. So, in order to avoid an extensive failure or accident, the early prognosis of crack in structures is necessary. Visual inspection and some non-destructive testing (NDT) methods for detection of crack are difficult as it requires time, expenses and are quite inefficient. So the alternative methods are motivated to be developed. In this study, vibration analysis, finite element analysis (FEA) and an alternative way which is artificial neural network (ANN) is used to predict, detect and identify the damages in structures. It is found that the theoretical, experimental, finite element analysis and artificial neural network have good accuracy in predicting the crack characteristics.

The main objective of the present study is to investigate the risk factors influencing on construction firm’s project success in Pakistan. The study uses the partial least square structural equation modelling technique to analyse the data collected from 61 construction firms. The study finds positive impacts of design risk, financial risk, technical risk and labour risk on the success of the project. Alternatively, the current study finds no relationship between external risk factors and the success of the project. Furthermore, the current study suggests government and construction firms to consider the risk factors during the decision making for project implementation.

This study discusses the variables that can determine the growth of bank credit in Indonesia. The selected independent variables are the control of third-party funds and operating costs on credit growth. The analytical method used is multiple regression with Probit analysis to see the lag-1 and lag-2 data categories. The results obtained that the Control of Third Parties Funds and Operational Costs on Credit Growth obtained significant results according to the simultaneous hypothesis testing. It means that the third-party funds and the operating costs affect credit growth. Meanwhile, the third-party funds partially influence the dependent variable, namely credit growth. Finally, the operational costs partially influence the dependent variable, namely credit growth.

This research aims to find out the significant difference between added value on sustainable competitive advantage and unsustainable competitive advantage of Islamic banks in Indonesia. The population in this study is Islamic banking units in Indonesia, the sampling technique used purposive sampling and the data is used from annual financial reports from 2015 to 2019. The results of this research support the resource-based theory that companies that can maintain their competitive advantage have added value and can also manage their strategic assets in the form of VRIN (Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, non-substitutable) more efficiently. The results also indicate that companies that can maintain competitive advantage are those that can provide added value for the stakeholders. The test results support the RBT hypothesis, as evidenced by the finding that it is possible to use VRIN assets to offer added value for stakeholders.