Human resource management plays an essential role on the success of any business units such as utility firms. In this paper, we present a study to investigate the effects of different human resource management on employee performance. The proposed study is applied on one of gas distribution units in province of Charmahal-Bakhtiari, which is located west part of Iran. There were 161 people working for this firm where 75 employees were working in center of province and 86 employees were working in other sides of province. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.83, which is well above the minimum desirable limit. The study uses Pearson correlation test to investigate the effects of Hiring system, Training system, Job design, Organizational relationship and Share ownership programs on employee performance. The results of our survey indicate that job design is the most important technique for employee management followed by training system, organizational relationship and share ownership programs.

Leadership style plays an essential role on personality trait in educational systems. In this paper, we present a study among 180 school principals in city of Khomeinishahr, located in province of Esfahan, Iran. The study selects a sample of 123 principals and examines ten hypotheses including the effects of personality trait neuroticism, extroversion, resilience, participative, conscientiousness on leadership style. The study examined the effects of two groups of leadership, namely transactional leadership and Laissez-fair leadership styles on five personality traits. The results have shown that there were some meaningful relationship between transactional leadership and personality trait extraversion, resilience, participative and consciousness but there was not meaningful relationship between transactional leadership and personality trait neuroticism. In addition, while there were meaningful and positive relationship between Laissez-fair leadership style and personality trait extraversion as well as being resilience, our survey did not find any meaningful relationship between Laissez-fair leadership style and personality trait neuroticism, extraversion and being consciousness.

Earning reports are the primary basis of investment decisions among many individuals and fund managers. Any positive/negative adjustment on quarterly financial report could influence investment strategies, which consequently make significant change on market value. In this paper, we present an empirical study on some selected firms on Tehran Stock exchange by looking the effects of quarterly earning adjustment on firm and market’s return. The proposed study selects all firms whose shares were actively and publicly traded over the period 2006-2011. The study investigates whether there is a meaningful relationship between the content of quarterly earnings report and stock price with/without the presence of control variables. The results have concluded that there are some meaningful relationships between change in earning and market value and return on firm with market value but market value seems to have no relationship with market return changes.

The present exploratory study aims to find critical components of retail brand among some retail stores. The study seeks to build a brand name in retail level and looks to find important factors affecting it. Customer behavior is largely influenced when the first retail customer experience is formed. These factors have direct impacts on customer experience and satisfaction in retail industry. The proposed study performs an empirical investigation on two well-known retain stores located in city of Tehran, Iran. Using a sample of 265 people from regular customers, the study uses factor analysis and extracts four main factors including related brand, product benefits, customer welfare strategy and corporate profits using the existing 31 factors in the literature.

The recent advances on information technology have made tremendous change on traditional banking. These days, people do not carry cash and prefer to use electronic devices such as point of sale system (POS) or PIN entry devices (PinPad) to do desirable transactions. These technologies could facilitate e-business and increase profitability in various industries including banking sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of five new products namely ATM, POS Machines, PinPad machines, online and swift branches on banking performance indicators including return on assets (ROA), return on equities (ROE) and operating investment return (OIR). We use the information of 19 private and governmental banks, which were active in Iran over the period of 2005-2010. The study uses linear regression analysis as well as VAR technique to study the effects of the independent variables on bank performance indicators. The results indicate that while there are some weak and positive relationships between three technology indicators including POS, PinPad and online businesses and ROA as well as ROE, there is relatively strong and positive relationship between these three independent variables and OIR. In addition, while the results of VAR analysis have shown that any reduction on PinPad will reduce OIR but this reduction will disappear after approximately four periods.

This paper presents an empirical survey on the performance of physical education programs among elementary schoolchildren in city of Esfahan, Iran over the period 2010-2011. The study selects 18 non-for-profit and 34 governmental schools as samples and performs an empirical investigation on various personal characteristics of teachers in two different schools. The study investigates whether there is any difference between teachers’ age, education, area of education, having any coach, referee certificate and in-service courses in two types of non-for-profit and governmental schools. The results of our investigation show that physical education has a somewhat better quality in non-for-profit educational system compared with governmental ones but this difference is not statistically significance (P & LT; 0.05) in most cases except the cases of age and educational background.

Knowledge management plays an essential role on developing efficient systems in educational systems. However, there are different factors influencing the success of knowledge management. In this paper, we review recent advances on implementation of knowledge management (KM) in different areas and discuss why some of KM implementations fail and how they could turn to a successful one. The review focus more on recently published papers in different perspective from the implementation of KM in educational units to KM implementation on project management field.

Lean is a continuous journey to grow and excel the company. Any company want to develop and cope with the world pace must adopt lean. However, in most of the organizations the management culture or people’s mentality is not so good to embrace change. They have predestined mind set where no change is normally allowed. Lean is a cooperative way of working that involves all departments and all personnel to work together in a team for the betterment of the entire company. Without providing fixed solution of any problem it suggests the best way that people willingly accept to do. Lean normally deals with highest quality, shorter lead time and lowest cost. In Bangladesh, most of the garment manufacturing companies are experiencing a massive quality problem. We describe a case where traffic light, a tool of lean quality system was adopted to a garment manufacturing company in Bangladesh. We also provide the charts to contrast the before and after scenario in detail, in order to illustrate the company benefits. After the traffic light system being implemented, the quality status was improved, production capacity was increased; significant days were saved that enhanced the lead time and thus strengthen the supply chain.

Knowledge creation and innovation are primary competitive advantage in the modern economy. Social capital, on the other hand, is one the most important components of organizations, which could help share knowledge within organization and create competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of social capital on knowledge creation in petrochemical industry. The survey designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some experts who worked for petrochemical industry. The study investigates the impact of social capital in terms of three components of cognitive, relational and structural capitals on knowledge creation. Cronbach alpha in combined form is calculated as 0.79, which validates the overall survey. Structural equation modeling has been used to examine the proposed study and the results have confirmed that all three items positively influence knowledge creation, significantly.