The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions of hotel service quality, to assess relative importance of them and to evaluate service quality of Tehran hotels in terms of guests’ perspectives. The paper examines the reliability and validity of the designed scale based on SERVQUAL model. A cross-sectional research based on SERVQUAL model conducted on nine hotels in Tehran (n=1080). Several statistical analyses such as EFA, CFA, Linear regression and t-test were applied to analyze the data. Five service quality dimensions were identified and named as “tangibles”, “problem solving”, “service supply”, “empathy” and “security”. Even though our findings confirmed five dimensional SERVQUAL constructs, some dimensions have been identified differing from SERVQUAL scale dimensions. Finding showed that the best overall service quality predictor is “tangibles” followed by “service supply”, “problem solving”, “assurance” and “empathy”.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of industry type on relationship between Tobin’s Q and working capital management among selected firms from Tehran Stock Exchange. The proposed study gathers the necessary financial information from 219 different firms over the period 2001-2011 and categorizes them based on different sectors. There are five independent variables including current ratio, the ratio of current assets to total assets, debt ratio, the ratio of current liabilities to total assets and total cash. Using a linear regression by considering type of industry as dummy variable, the study detects that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between working capital and Tobin-Q in various industries.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of knowledge management on job satisfaction in Iranian texture industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 219 out 230 employees who work for one Iranian texture firm in province of Markazi in Iran. The study uses structural equation modeling to examine different hypotheses based on the implementation of LISREL software package. The results of our investigation indicate that knowledge management positively influences on organizational improvement, organizational learning as well as quality improvement. The results of study also indicate that while there was a negative relationship between organizational improvement and job satisfaction, quality improvement and organizational learning positively influence on job satisfaction.

During the past few years, there have been increasing trend on building appropriate model for supplier selection and a good supplier, indeed, is capable of providing better quality products, which could lead to increase the productivity of an organization. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to find the effect of monitoring three different standards, namely, domestic, national and international standard on improving the quality of products in water and sewage projects. The proposed model of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some experts in a rural Water & Sewage firm located in city of Ahvaz, Iran. Using the Pearson correlation ratio, the study examines three hypotheses of the survey and the results indicate that there were poor relationship between carefully considering domestic, national and international standards and improvement on quality of products offered by various suppliers. In addition, job experience and type of employment also do not seem to have any meaningful effect on quality assessment of suppliers.

Brand is a symbol, logo and indicator of the specific identity of a product manufacturer and the services they render which can create value for both the manufacturer itself and the customers of those products and services. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between Iranian cultural factors with those creating brand value in this industry. The proposed study chooses Philpa System Co. as statistical population and the subject for our case study. The study chooses 56 people who had some past purchase experience from Philpa System as samples. A questionnaire was designed and distributed among the participants. The validity of which was confirmed through depth interviews made with experts of the pertinent industry and its reliability was also calculated using Cronbach & apos; s alpha test and was shown to be 82.4 %, which indicated the good reliability of these questionnaires. The data obtained from these questionnaires were analyzed using path analysis and structural equation modeling methods. The results gained from the investigations showed that different aspects of Iranian cultural factors, specifically customer honoring, had the greatest effect on the quality of customers’ perception from the brand; it was also shown that promotion in any of the other aspects presented in Aaker’s brand equity model will directly influence and increase the perceived quality of the brand.

This paper presents an investigation to find out important factors influencing electronic customer relationship management on reducing customer complaints. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 19 questions, distributes it among some Iranian experts in banking industry and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number questions are reduced to 16 because of skewness of three questions. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.82 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.746 and 1993, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived four factors including knowledge management, customer retention, customer oriented strategy and structure oriented.

Any phenomenon can be considered and analyzed in terms of different perspectives. In multilevel theorists view, structure or structures of the studied phenomenon are used to consider or to analyze it, completely. Level of analysis indicates the purpose of a researcher or theorist that is intended to be explained or justified, like individual, group or organizational levels and then they are generalized. Contrary to multilevel approach, the conventional approach of theorizing considers micro level or macro level. It cannot perform a simultaneous micro–macro level analysis. A multilevel approach characterized by inter-level and multilevel organizational view to organizational phenomena is an attempt to expand the boundaries of knowledge and provide a new plan. This study uses documentary studies to analyze the multi-level approach of theorizing, multilevel models and multilevel analysis.

These days, we see many organizations with extremely complex systems with various processes, organizational units, individuals, and information technology support where there are complex relationships among their various elements. In these organizations, poor architecture reduces efficiency and flexibility. Enterprise architecture, with full description of the functions of information technology in the organization, attempts to reduce the complexity of the most efficient tools to reach organizational objectives. Enterprise architecture can better assess the optimal conditions for achieving organizational goals. For evaluating enterprise architecture, executable model need to be applied. Executable model using a static architectural view to describe necessary documents need to be created. Therefore, to make an executable model, we need a requirement to produce products of the enterprise architecture to create an executable model. In this paper, for the production of an enterprise architecture, object-oriented approach is implemented. We present an algorithm to use stereotypes by considering reliability assessment. The approach taken in this algorithm is to improve the reliability by considering additional components in parallel and using redundancy techniques to maintain the minimum number of components. Furthermore, we implement the proposed algorithm on a case study and the results are compared with previous algorithms.

The recent trend on competition among insurance firms has increased motivation to look for important factors influencing this industry. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to find important factors shaping this industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and, using principal component analysis, detects important factors on the success of this industry. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.849, and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett & apos; s Test are calculated as 0.873 and 12744 with (Sig. =0.000), respectively. The study has detected four important factors including quality of service casualties, sales improvement and advertisement, quality of issuance of insurance policies and quality of work force.

This paper presents an investigation on the role of brand image on customer loyalty on rubber industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 27 questions, distributes it among some Iranian experts in rubber industry and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number questions are reduced to 23. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.812 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.671 and 2375, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived six factors including penetration strategy, infrastructure characteristics, competitive pricing, target marketing strategy, communication strategy and market characteristics.