Iranian Journal of Management Studies
Volume:11 Issue: 3, Summer 2018

The present study examines the impact of capital employed in buyback of shares on firm value for 180 firms listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange of India. The issue of buyback of shares in the period from 2006 to 2016 was examined. The firm value is measured by a proxy, enterprise value, as a substitute of share price. The results suggest that the firm value differs from pre and post buyback of shares. The findings of this study further imply that the proportion of paid-up equity capital employed by companies for buyback of shares does not have any significant effect on firm value.

Telecommunications is the todays’ leading industry. Value Added Services (VAS) is considered as one of the most money making segments of Telecom services. The purpose of this paper is to allocate promotional marketing strategies to customer segments. Therefore, a four-phase practical framework is developed to prioritize marketing strategies based on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). The first phase focuses on information gathering. Consequently, the CLV of each customer is calculated. Then, the customers are clustered into separated segments based on their CLV scores, using Fuzzy C-Mean. Finally, the appropriate marketing strategy is prioritized for each segment, using Fuzzy TOPSIS technique.

The present study seeks to examine the factors affecting information search of heads of households in purchasing an outbound package tour. A sample of 60 academics and non-academics in the field of tourism was chosen. Sampling methods were judgmental and snowball sampling. In order to gather data, we used a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was applied for data analysis, and the collected data were codified and analyzed under four main categories. The findings showed that personality traits of heads of households, their preference for sole decision-making over collective decision-making, their motivation for providing family satisfaction, their motivation for taking better advantage of opportunities and their familiarity with the travel destination were among influencing personal factors. Familial demographic factors, social class, and family’s familiarity with the travel destination were among influencing familial factors. Situational factors included social factors, travel importance and time constraints; and travel agents factor encompassed their reliability.

Nowadays, the changes in the dominant economic models, the emergence of knowledge-based economy and the lack of research budgets have caused the academic and research centers to pay attention to the commercialization of research findings. Although, there exist some studies pertaining to this topic, most of them have dealt with natural sciences rather than humanities and soft technology. To bridge this gap, the current study tries to identify and overcome the barriers to commercialization of research findings in humanities using a contextual theory and an interpretive approach. The study uses qualitative methods in three steps. In the first step, previous studies related to this topic are scrutinized and several barriers to research commercialization are extracted. Then, in the second step, Delphi method is utilized to examine the extent of the influence of each barrier and identify more items. Finally, grounded theory is used to present a conceptual framework for the barriers to research commercialization in humanities. According to the findings, the most important barriers are related to policymaking, legal rights, resources, infrastructure, intrinsic value of humanities, technological nature of humanities, and behavior of the actors.

Terrorism, political system instability and currency rate fluctuations are the three most evident issues of 21st century. In this study, comparative analysis is performed to check the impact of all these issues on PSX Volatility. EGARCH (1,1) approach is used on four different kinds of data collected from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2015. Terrorist events, FX return fluctuations with restoration of democratic political system in Pakistan are considered in this study. Results confirm that democratic political government reduces PSX volatility while terrorism increases it. Terrorist attacks are categorized into various categories. Event day analysis confirms that Pakistan stock market (PSX) is efficient enough to absorb the effects of terrorist attack within a day. Holding portfolios and performing arbitrage activities by the investors diversify the risks due to foreign exchange (FX) fluctuations which show no significant impact on PSX volatility.

The success of tourism development heavily depends on residents’ support. Broader literature suggests sense of place and social capital are important precedents of residents’ attitudes and behavior. However, limited attention has been paid to this topic in tourism, especially in Iran. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the relationship between sense of place, social capital and residents’ attitudes toward tourism support. Data were collected from residents in the historic city of Shiraz, one of the main tourist destinations in Iran. A survey method based on a structured questionnaire was applied. Data analysis was conducted using a Structural Equation Modelling two-step approach. Results from 386 questionnaires indicated a positive significant relationship between sense of place and social capital, and sense of place and tourism support. However, social capital did not mediate the relationship between sense of place and tourism support. The research findings suggest that it is important for urban planners to take measures to maintain and improve the residents’ place sense in order to gain their support for tourism. Further study is required to investigate the effect of social capital on residents’ attitude towards support for tourism development.

An educational gamification is a new approach that has developed hopes to increase the effectiveness of learning. Computer game users are actually players that are categorized according to their personalities and have different learning styles. To achieve maximum performance in designing gamified learning, one can determine the relationship between player types and their learning styles, and then use this relationship to design better gamification in the field of education. In this research, the relationship between types of players based on Hexad scale model and the dimensions of Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model (FSLSM) have been investigated. To this end, the research data were collected from 121 university students. After analyzing the results of the crosstab and Pearson’s Chi-square test, five hypotheses were approved from ten developed hypotheses, which could be used to guide the more effective design of gamification elements.

In today’s societies, entrepreneurship has undeniable effects on economic, social, and technological development of countries. In this regard, the Iranian food industry, which includes many specific features, including the vast domestic and regional consumption market, was considered by the researchers in this study. The purpose of this research is to investigate and identify variables and to explain the effective factors on the individual entrepreneurship process in Iran’s food industry. In the first phase of the study, the survey team carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 experts in the domain of food industries. In the second phase of the study, a questionnaire based on the Grey DEMATEL method is available to experts for determining priorities and interrelationships between the factors. Based on the research data, paired comparison analysis questionnaire has been used. The findings of the research show that among the six categories – individual, personality, occupation, food industry environment, institutional, and environmental factors – the environmental ones were the most influential factors. Also, the individual ones were the most influenced factors and at the same time the most important factor among the ones influencing the process of entrepreneurship in Iran’s food industries.