فصلنامه مدرس علوم انسانی
شماره 3 (پیاپی 46، بهار 1385)

In the world today, information technology and information systems (IT/IS) are no longer as work tools or as production resources, but they are considered as new environment and work space. This new environment or work space has provided an area for great developments including a change in the method of organizing and presenting new organizational forms such as knowledge worker’s organization, network organization, virtual organization, and so on. Regarding the effects of IT/IS on organizational structures and its dimensions, many investigations have been carried out during the last 3 decades but the findings from these studies are contradictory. On the other hand, considering the changes in the vast variety of IT/IS and changes in the applications and capabilities of IT/IS, the generalization of the last research findings has decreased in this regard. Hence, while determining the last research results, the present article has attempted to design and determine a comprehensive model for integration of the literature, regarding this issue in the theoretical field according to the new cases of IT/IS such as different information systems, internet, intranet, extranet, video conference, e-mail and so on, and to identify two adjusting variables of effects on organization structure by IT/IS. For this purpose, in order to acquire more understanding of IT/IS effects on organization structure as well as to recognize the effect of two adjusting variables on the top management leadership style and its attitude towards IT/IS on organizational structure in spare parts building industries of Iran’s Automobile, three questionnaires have been used. These questionnaires were distributed as an existing status evaluation questionnaire of information technology and information systems (IT/IS) in companies, a questionnaire relating to organization structure of companies and a questionnaire for determination of top management leadership style in an organization among the successful companies of Iran’s automobile part-building industries. In each company, three people from the managerial levels (the managing director, administrative and human resources manager and IT manager) answered the questions. Data collected from the companies were analyzed by using the SPSS /11.5 software, and hypotheses based on research model were tested and, at the end, a comprehensive organizational design commensurate with information technology and information system (IT/IS) was presented.

This research is designed to identify challenges and barriers of women for promotion to managerial positions in public and state owned organizations. Recent studies have showed that the total number of women have gained managerial positions has increased. But they still have little share of managerial positions. Therefore the objectives of this research are: 1. Identifying characteristics of women appointed to managerial positions, 2. Recognizing influential variables in promotion to managerial positions or the way they have obtained and promoted to these positions, 3. Identifying skills and competencies that could be thought to woman managers in order to easily accept the responsibilities, 4. Identifying restrictional factors or barriers of further promotion of woman to senior managerial levels. The data were collected through a questionnaire completed by 257 women managers in public and stated owned organizations and minsitries. The results showed that: - Most women managers have university degrees in humanities disciplines, average 40 years age, and 5-10 years tenure. - The main influential factors in obtaining the position were: reliable performance, track record, higher education, experience and following the organizational rules. - The skills and competencies that they learned during the first management related skills are self - assurance, correct judgement, etc. - Women managers suffer many problems including community and public attitudes toward women, as well as subordinates, unfair and unequal incentives or opportunities. The major promotion barriers are decision making biases and traditional attitudes toward role of women in the society. According to factor analysis done, socio-cultural factors are mentioned more than organizational and personnal, factors. On the basis of these findings, the study offers few suggestions to women managers, decision makers in organizations, as well as policy makers in government.

The engines of software movement in Iran are universities and research institutions. This movement, reflected in scientific production, is a product of basic, applied and evaluation research. PH.D and master degree students can play an important role in scientific production. Student’s dissertations and scientific papers can be a channel for rendering Iran scientific products. Indeed, universities not only transfer knowledge but also by academic researches, create knowledge and disseminate it in society. This created knowledge (Theory) must be evaluated. Therefore, in this paper, first we will discuss relationship between knowledge and theory, then offer a short viewpoint about concept of theory and building bricks of it and suggest some criteria for evaluating new theories in social science.

The increasing trend of manpower and financial investments have made information technology productivity more important than before. Researches show various results of information technology productivity. While some of the researches attribute the improvement and increase of productivity and profitability to the information technology, others consider the real profits of information technology disappointing and even pretend that information technology has not been able to increase productivity and create economic advantage. The present research covers the information technology productivity at the economy level (industry level) and has a different assessment of information technology productivity criteria through studying whole economic guidelines as well as industrial guidelines. The results of the field research and surveying the records and valid statistics made it clear that although there is not a meaning ful disparity between manpower and financial investments, there is a gap between existing information technology productivity and the prospective one. In this article, besides stating the study criteria and presenting hypotheses and research findings, the different criteria of assessing information technology productivity have been taken into consideration.

Time and uncertainty play a crucial role in the strategic planning process [1]. Many industries have collapsed or been knocked out of the competition due to unforeseen able changes in the environment and their forecast about the future failed. Organizations are faced with unpredictable changes in new technologies, products and market places and their planned strategies are not able to respond to such a dynamic and changeable environment. These sorts of pressures are increasing in future because of the rapid developments of technology, economics and community. Needless to say, the future is not predictable but it is noteworthy that organizations can prepare themselves to face such changes and this readiness results in competitive advantages. The more the uncertainties, the more considerable the competitive advantages of organizations devised robust and stable strategies against uncertainty will be. This paper aims at introducing a method that enables organizations to draw up robust strategies in uncertain situations and leads to formulation of strategies to immunize them against environment changes. The method put forth in this paper has combined 'scenario planning method' and 'fuzzy inference system' with traditional strategic planning by adopting a novel and creative approach. Using the values of uncertain factors in the external environment, this method designs some probable forthcoming scenarios of the organization and then based on fuzzy information defined by experts for fuzzy inference systems, defines a robust strategy to deal with the designed scenarios. This method assists a manager and an organizational strategic planner in their evaluations of future environment and provides them with deep understanding of their planned strategies to keep their competitive advantages in the unstable and unsettled future.

Complexity theory is the science of studying adaptive complex system. This science includes chaos theory, self-organization theory and fractal geometry. The origin of this theory is in Biology. Although there are common elements between ontology, epistemology and methodology of complexity theory and postmodernism, we can’t say complexity theory is a postmodern theory because there are also similarities between complexity science and positivism paradigm. In this paper, we will compare complexity theory to postmodernism and positivism and the result is that complexity theory is not fully a postmedern theory.

Among flows in every supply chain (finance, information, and material), material flow according to its part in product cost is very important. Many studies in the field of material flow showed that material flows are often single level. This study offers a comprehensive model for appropriate order assignment in different levels of supply chain according to minimizing related cost to with genetic algorithm method. Results based on genetic algorithm is compared to other common pattern search methods such as Latin Hypercub and Mead-Nelder. The evidence shows that genetic algorithm method is the best method among other methods.

Results of the studies done by the Soco - economic Research Division of the former ministry of agriculture [1, p. 3-82] in mid - 1990s indicate that weaknesses of management system in rural areas specially after the 1962 land reform have created a number of pathological problems in agricultural production and rural social relations. These weaknesses have also brought about damaging consequences to the country's development process and to the agricultural production of Iran villages. For this reason, this paper funded by Institute for Planning and Agricultural Economy, is an attempt to design a measuring tool (through transformation of socio - economic variables to mathematical elements in a universal formula) to measure the functions of rural management based on the economic activity of the village so that through a periodical application of the formula one can identify the weak points of the rural management and use the necessary variables to repair the weak points. In order to design this mathematical tool, we will first identify the factors that cause any fluctuation in effectiveness of rural management by using a theoretical and psycho - sociological approach and then we will classify these factors with an analytical model. This approach was empirically validated through an explorative study done in areas such as Shahmeerzad, Sargost of Bandar- Abbas, northern strip from Noor to Ramsar, Zarrin- dasht of Firuzkooh and rural areas of Shahroud and Kelardasht. The theoretical elements were then transformed to measurable variables along with their indicators. The operational precedence of this model and its formulae is that in the process of its application if any changes in socio - political, cultural and economic indicators occurs, one can replace the new indicators with the previous ones. So, this model and its measuring tools have a distinctive feature of being self- modifying and cannot be affected by elements of time, space, the geographical dimension of its application, or type of the economic activity of the village under consideration. Hence, after a tentative application of this model for a period of three to five years and after modification of its elements, it can be used in any socio - economic setting compatible with rural characteristics.

Just in Time (JIT) production systems are introduced for production and supply of goods and services with minimum inventory. The goal of this paper is present a sample of system dynamics modeling application for analysis and improvement of JIT system's behavior. In this paper relations between demand of products, quality of produced goods, inventory, maintenance of machines and facilities, production rate and supplier's efficiency are investigated in a dynamic system. In the first section problem definition, dynamic hypothesis, causal diagram and flow diagram of system are discussed. Afterwards behavior of the model is inspected from different views by developing a dynamic model.

This manuscript trying to study amount of importance, usefulness and comprehensiveness of the concept of environment munificence for measuring nature of Iran's corporations environment based on conceptual and systematic approach. Through reviewing literature, interviewing with experts, the environment munificence concept was redefined and based on subjective approach, some dimensions were added, meanwhile, the importance and priority of it's variables were determinated.