Iranian Journal of Management Studies
Volume:9 Issue: 2, Spring 2016

Inevitably, it is essential to identify variant dimensions and indexes of managers’ adequacy. This problem is considered as the core of this study. This research makes use of qualitative method and interview. As for sampling, after interviewing 12 participants, this research reached saturation point where repetition was observed. Thematic analysis was utilized to encode data, which resulted in eight dimensions: general knowledge and awareness, intelligence and talent, values and attitudes, personality traits, communication skills, decision-making skills, leadership and management abilities. Moreover, some sub-themes concordant to the related literature were found. Findings of the present study suggest the argument that in order to determine every individual’s adequacy positions should be aptly identified by proper procedures firstly. Then, an appropriate competency model in line with the organization should be developed. In addition, such a model needs to fit with the structure of the organization and its positions and strategies.

Developing countries are increasingly relying on Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) for their socio-economic development. Many countries have achieved faster gross domestic product (GDP) growth through information technology (IT) outsourcing, which is now largely recognized as a strategic management practice that can provide a competitive advantage in business. The East African Community (EAC) member states are putting in place policies to help improve their overall ICT environment competitiveness. This paper evaluates the current state of IT outsourcing readiness in the EAC countries, and contributes to the outsourcing body of knowledge by establishing a relation between a country’s Networked Readiness Index (NRI) and its readiness for IT outsourcing. This evaluation is performed based on the PROMETHEE method which is very effective at dealing with multi-criteria decision making problems. The results show that Kenya is the most ready country for IT outsourcing in EAC, followed by Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi.

The achievement of strategies goals is one of the objectives of many organizations. One of the important influences on strategic objectives is the attitudes and perceptions of strategic planners groups. This paper focuses on conception of strategic directions in Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI) among administrators (including board members, top and middle managers). This study was designed to illustrate how Q methodology can be used as a tool for strategic planning. Potential plans for the future of EDBI were formulated and Q sorted by 20 members of EDBI to determine support or resistance of them. The results show that these stakeholders have three distinct conceptions about strategic direction which are based on how they perceive these strategic themes. The author labeled these conceptions as: intellectual capital developers, external environmental scanners and budget supervisors. This study also provided a list of strategic objectives for leadership of the bank resulting from the areas of strong consensus between the three conceptions.

The present study identified the structural requirements for auditing educational and research processes in universities. The problem posed in this research is the lack of specific and appropriate structural dimensions for educational and research auditing. The study is descriptive and used the exploratory method. Questionnaires were used to collect data. Data analysis revealed that formalization elements, formation of an official division of specialized professional staff, an organizational chart and activities organized using a horizontal complexity approach are structural requirements for auditing the educational and research processes.

The purpose of this study is exploring expectation gap among university students and auditors points of view about importance of fraud risk components. To get this purpose, university student's ideas and auditors about importance of each mentioned fraud risk components in Iranian auditing standard No. 24 under the title of "the auditor’s responsibilities relating to fraud in an audit of financial statements" is questioned. Data gathering tool in this study is questionnaire that its content and construct validity was confirmed. Test results have shown that auditor's points of view have significant difference in evaluating importance of fraud risk components with university student's opinions. The most important fraud risk components according to auditors and university student's points of view are "dependence of a main part of salaries and benefits of managers on operations results, financial statements, or cash flows" and "lack of supervision from management on important internal controls". Fraud components are classified into four groups according to their occurrence conditions: 1. management characteristics, 2. industry conditions, 3. operating characteristics including financial stability, and 4. misappropriation of asset. According to results obtained from test hypotheses, it was determined that the most important fraud risk components based on auditor's points of view is related to misappropriation of asset, but based on university student's point of view, fraud risk components related to management characteristics is more important than other three groups of fraud components.

Customer relationship management is a multiple perspective business paradigm which helps companies gaining competitive advantage through relationships with their customers. An integrated framework for evaluating CRM performance is an important issue which is not addressed completely in previous studies. The main purpose and the most important contribution of this study is introducing a framework based on the integration of two novel MCDM methods. In this regard, first, by the survey of related literature, five main criteria of the CRM performance measurement were identified. In the second step, by means of judgmental sampling, a committee of 20 experts of Mellat Bank and its three subsidiary branches were formed and their idea about the importance of the five CRM evaluation criteria was extracted through questionnaire. Fuzzy Shannon’s entropy was applied for calculating the relative importance. In the third step, for demonstrating the applicability of the model three subsidiary branches which were applying CRM systems, were ranked by fuzzy COPRAS based on their CRM performance.

Due to the increasing competition and the continuous changes in current business environments, appropriate evaluation of the companie's performance is a useful tool not only for themselves but also for their own investors and creditors. In this paper, a model is presented for evaluating the basic metals producing companies. The proposed model based on analyzing the financial ratios is a combination of the FAHP (fuzzy analytical hierarchy process) and the VIKOR. The FAHP is used for determining the weights of the financial ratios and the VIKOR is applied for ranking the companies. To clarify the effectiveness and the accuracy of the developed method, the obtained result from the VIKOR is compared with the results of the TOPSIS technique. It can be seen from the results that the VIKOR based ranking is relatively similar to the result by the TOPSIS. In this research, the proposed method is utilized for evaluation of the performance of eight Iranian basic metals companies exist in Tehran stock exchange list.

Since 1960s, organizational commitment and its antecedents studied from a single– level view; but the study by taking multilevel approach received less attention. In this research, a conceptual cross– level model of organizational commitment antecedents proposed and tested. Data obtained from 461 faculty members of Tehran major universities. Hierarchical linear models examined using HLM6.08. Results showed that consideration has the most moderating effect and moderates seven relationships (e.g., relationship between organizational commitment and perceived management esteem). Participation in decision-making moderates six relationships (e.g., relationship between trust in management and perceived management support). Feedback moderates four relationships (e.g., relationship between organizational commitment and perceived procedural justice). Positive discipline moderates two relationships (relationship between organizational commitment and perceived management esteem and relationship between organizational commitment and trust in management).

Acknowledged by most researchers and scholars, human resource productivity is the most important factor in the resistive economy and business. On the other hand, Workforce diversity is one of the major challenges of this century; and perhaps for managers, managing diversity is more important than seeking diversity to maximize the human resource productivity. The present study aims to analyze the effects of diversity management and its approaches on HR productivity, with an emphasis on the role of cognitive mediator variables, including perceived organizational attractiveness, organizational justice, and social identity in the Mobarakeh Steel and Isfahan Steel companies of Iran. According to the sample size formula in Structural Equation Modeling, this study sample comprises 500 employees. Data analysis was conducted using SEM and path analysis by LISREL8.8. The results of this study confirmed the conceptual model: the effects of diversity management on human resource productivity. The mediator role of perceived organizational attractiveness, perceived organizational justice, and perceived social identity, has also been verified.

This study tests the hypothesis that market value added (MVA) is more highly associated with stock return (SR) than traditional performance measures. The purpose of this study is to provide empirical evidence on the relative and incremental information content of MVA and traditional performance measures, namely, net income (NI), net operational profit after tax (NOPAT), and earning per shares (EPS). The sample involved 395 non-financial companies listed in the main market of Bursa Malaysia over the period 2002–2011. To analyze the hypotheses panel data regression methods were employed. The results indicated that accounting measures (NI, NOPAT and EPS) have higher relative information content with stock return compared to MVA. Thus, the results do not support the hypothesis that MVA is superior to traditional accounting measures in association with stock return. Moreover, the findings showed that MVA has incremental information content with stock return compared to accounting measures. Consequently, MVA is a useful measure in describing the firm’s stock return in Bursa Malaysia. Therefore, Malaysian companies can use MVA with traditional measures (NI, NOPAT, and EPS) in evaluating companies’ performance.