ehsan khanmohammadi

Strategic planning is necessary for success and creating competitive advantage in a complex and dynamic environment of today's organizations. Balanced Scorecard is a relatively new tool for planning strategies and implementing strategy. One of the main stages related to the Balanced Scorecard deployment in organizations or companies, is prioritization of strategic objectives in the strategy map. In this paper, prioritized strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the organization are considered as criteria for evaluating strategic goals. There are different approaches for strategic objective prioritization. In this paper, strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats were considered as criteria of a decision matrix. Then Fuzzy Technique for Ordering Preferences Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) technique, one of the best techniques in Multi-Criteria Decision Making, was used for prioritization of strategic objectives. Using Fuzzy TOPSIS needs to weight of criteria. According to the internal relationships between strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats, Analytical Network Process (ANP) was used to weight them. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Today, the values ​​of various societies are subject to a wide range of changes. These values ​​include a range that varies according to the characteristics of each society. In addition, within societies, the degree of commitment to and following these values ​​among members of each society varies according to the division of gender, class, place of residence, generation, etc. One of these values, regardless of the type and level of commitment, is religiosity. In the definition of religiosity, it is said that religiosity has ‘religious endeavors’ in such a way to influence the attitude, orientation, and individual actions. This research sought to investigate religiosity among the youths of Sar-e-Pol-e Zahab city and its related factors.

The research methodology was a survey approach. The study sample consisted of 635 youths with the age range of 19-29 years in Sar-e-Pul Zahab. They were selected using stratified sampling. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire. The measured dependent variable was religiosity which had three dimensions: emotional, belief, and practical. Social capital as one of the two independent variables of the study had the dimensions of participation, solidarity, trust, socio-economic basis, and ethnic identity. Another independent variable of the study was media consumption. The results indicated that the level of religiosity among respondents was slightly higher than average. Among the dimensions of religiosity, the belief dimension had the highest average, and the practical dimension had the lowest average. Results in relation to gender differences indicated that in terms of emotional and belief dimensions, the level of religiosity of women is significantly more than men. However, there was no significant difference between men and women in practical aspects. But, in relation to the marital status, the results indicated that the level of religiosity of married people in all aspects was greater than that of single people. Pearson correlation test indicated that three variables of social capital, national identity, and ethnic identity had a direct and significant relationship with religious dimension. Media consumption also had a negative and significant relationship with all three dimensions of religiosity. But, the relationship between economic and religious aspects was not meaningful. Finally, the direct and indirect relationships between independent variables and religiosity were tested in the path analysis model.

"Self-alienation" is considered to be one of the most important anthropological issues; it is a subject that has been given attention in various fields from different perspectives, and has a special importance and significance in today's life. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to examine the concept of "self-alienation" from the perspective of two Western and Muslim scholars, Eric Forum and Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, with regard to their particular status in this area. For data collection, library and documentary methods have been used. According to the results of the research, in the view of these thinkers, the concept of "self-alienation" consists of four dimensions of nature, manifestations, roots, and ways to overcome it. In addition, it became clear that the description of various aspects of "self-alienation" by these two thinkers has both fundamental and outward differences and similarities. Finally, with regard to the view of the two thinkers, one can conclude that, firstly, a passive attitude towards the causal factors of "self-alienation" should be avoided. And secondly, liberation from "self-alienation" requires an adherence to collectivism values and cannot be achieved through individualism.

Objective Long-term strategic planning is necessary if an organization intends to go beyond its customers’ expectations and remain competitive. A balanced scorecard is considered as a mere scorecard without a strategic plan. Therefore, it will only report the important measures not a clear understanding of leading the whole organization towards success. Strategic planning as the rationale behind balanced scorecards can clarify the strategies in an organization, but it cannot show an optimal path towards success in that organization. Balanced scorecard system has tried to obviate such problem through strategic orientations, yet it has never provided a specific approach to determine success in an organization. It is also noteworthy that strategic planning helps managers create a comprehensive image of the strategies, but it does not consider the effectiveness of the relationships and the classification of those relationships. Therefore, the present study aims at proposing a systematic approach in order to draw a strategic plan and to rank the practical objectives of such plans.

Methodology Alpha company, producing tires and tubes, has been considered as the target company for this research. There are around 600 employees in this company among which around 30 are managers, directors, supervisors or executive managers. Documents, observation, interview and questionnaire are the data collection instrument used in the present study. In the first questionnaire, used in fuzzy cognitive approach, 30 experts will respond to some questions regarding the organization strategic objectives on a scale of 0 to 100. The second questionnaire used in statistical approach, the 30 experts will rate the extracted relationship from 0 to 50 to determine the relationship between the objectives. The third questionnaire, considers the previous data as the input for BORDA-OWA approach, 6 executive directors rate the objectives on a scale of 0 to 100 according to their expertise.

Findings Based on the proposed methodology, 4 main steps were taken in this study. The extracted strategic objectives through fuzzy cognitive approach were categorized and the key relationships were discovered. The experts were asked to select the key relationships and to evaluate them. The proposed relationships were analyzed based on statistical tests and were all approved except for two relationships. Strategic map was drawn based on the confirmed relationships. Then, executive directors analyzed and ranked the strategic objectives of the plan. Because of the effects of the directors’ personal beliefs, these objectives were ranked differently by the executive directors. The results showed that improvement in the tire profitable income, improvement in tire and tube sale and development of foreign market were ranked highest by the directors. Regarding the effectiveness on strategic objectives, promoting bicycle and tire products, evolution and distinction in after-sale-services and promoting employees’ motivation were ranked the highest respectively. Regarding the effects by the strategic objectives, developing foreign market, increasing tire export rate, increasing product sale and developing national market and agricultural instruments were ranked the highest accordingly.

Conclusion Based on the results of the study, some promotion projects such as “formation of a market evaluator team”, “formation of a research and development team”, “optimizing production line”, “reviewing the salary and payment system” and “formation of suggestion centers” were proposed to the company managers. The main focus of the managers might be toward developing foreign market and increasing export rate, developing local market and agricultural instruments and improving product sales. In fact, the results indicate that developing local and foreign markets are the most important objectives and there is a strong need to “market evaluation” and “research and development” teams. The proposed methodology offers the managers a comprehensive and accurate idea in order to make decision on the executive priorities within their organization.

The purpose of this study is to provide a dynamic system model for modeling the growth and learning perspective of a manufacturing company. The main focus of the model is on the company's human resources management process. In this study, an approach based on dynamic simulation has been proposed to evaluate the human resource condition. In order to do that, the researchers aimed to identify the most important variables in the learning and growth perspective of the balanced scorecard. Besides, two qualitative and quantitative models were designed and implemented. The qualitative model is describing causal relationships and the presence of system feedbacks between the variables and the quantitative model is based on the mathematical relations between them. The proposed model was implemented in an Iranian production company working in the food and beverage industry. Different scenarios were defined based on the human resource strategic objectives in that company. The future status of human resource indicators of the company was predicted and analyzed through running scenarios in the dynamics model. The company managers will be able to evaluate the effective factors and their impact on the most important human resource indicators using the proposed model and to make the necessary decisions to achieve success in the future.

The nature and the relationship between reason and religion have always been one of the highly controversial topics among theologians and theorists in the realm of research, especially epistemology and Theology. The different and paradoxical ideas proposed in this regard have aroused a lot of doubts. Martyr Motahhari`s views have always been viewed as one of the most reliable patterns regarding the relationship between reason and religion. The present study aims at exploring his views about the relationship between reason and religion.
A documentary method and note-taking were used for collecting the data. The findings show that, according to Martyr Motahhari, reason and religion are not only in consistency with one another but they are also inseparable from one another. Indeed, man cannot achieve real prosperity with one of these two. This aim connot be attained except through the correlation between reason and religion. However, religion has priority over reason because it points the way to reason.

A kind of study shift from the mere focus on the modes of production to the modes of consumption, especially the cultural consumption occurred after 1970s, and by the same token a kind of explanatory turn happened from concentration on what are known as “hard variables” such as class to what are known as “soft variables” such as identity. Accordingly, music consumption, as one of the most important kinds of cultural consumption and explaining it based on collective identity came into focus. However, both realities of musical consumption mode and its explanation according to cultural factors have received little attention from the contemporary sociologists in Iran society.
Considering the mentioned limitations, the present study was done using quantity and survey method (description-explanatory) along with the researcher made questionnaire concerning the kind and the amount of musical consumption (dependent variable) and three modes of important modes of collective identity including ethnic, national and global ones (dependent variable). Lor students of Yasouj University were selected as the participants for some reasons: first by interacting with their families and in the city environment using Lori accent with their friends and relatives, they had access to ethnic talk. Second, they had access to national talk through their presence in the university, interaction with non-Lor friends, taking part in the classes and studying cultural texts with national and beyond ethnic content. Third, with the least skill in English and using new communication technologies like internet and new smart phones, they could have more access to global talk. Thus, for investigating the current study selecting students with Lori ethnic identity background who could also had access to national and global talks looked the most appropriate and logical strategy. According to Morgan table, 380 subjects were identified for the sample and this amount increased to 400 to increase the validity. To access the sample, the cluster random sampling method was also employed.
Discussion of results & The Friedman mean difference test results revealed that two kinds of pop music and western classic music had the most and the least musical consumptions respectively. Furthermore, the correlational test of different variables of the study showed that the relationship between ethnic identity and local, pop, and religious musical consumption is positive and significant while it is insignificant with western and traditional music. The correlation between national identity and western and pop musical consumption was significant and negative, while this correlation with religious musical consumption was significant and positive. The correlation between global identity and western, pop musical consumption was positive while this relationship with traditional, religious and local musical consumption was negative and significant. Finally, based on the findings it could be claimed that the degree of commitment and attachment to any type of collective identities shape the individual's musical consumption taste and leads him/ her towards consuming a particular musical type. In other words, people don’t select their musical consumption passively but this is an active process based on the identity assets of people. According to multiple regression test results all three kinds of collective identity played a role in the kind and the amount of musical consumption but in specifying one or more musical consumption mode and in different directions. Thus, it can be said that identity role in musical consumptions acts in two ways. First as a positive stimulator encourage people towards a specific musical consumption pattern and second as an inhibitor inhibit them from a specific musical consumption. Lastly, it was clarified that in investigating different musical consumption modes different factors should be taken into account and identical variables are not able to specify the variance and the diversity of musical consumption of different individuals.

This paper seeks to study the new qualitative methodologies, due to the importance of the method in science in general, and the humanities and social sciences in particular. Hence, considering Michel Foucault's position as a thinker, it has been trying to extract and study his specific methodology from his works and opinions. Using the documentary method and taking notes tool, the desired findings were obtained from Foucault's works as well as works that have been written about his thoughts. First, Foucault's fields of thought follow up among thinkers and philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Althusser; then, two specific Foucault’s methods, called genealogy and paleontology, were discussed. Finally, Foucault's ideas and methodological achievements were criticized and evaluated.

Vital decisions made at the strategic level in an organization are not only intricate but also costly to alter. It is therefore important to find a comprehensive approach to deal with such a possibility. One of the major problems of a common balanced scorecard (BSC)-based model in strategic management is lack of a ranking system for strategic objectives in order to enable prioritization of the operational actions for strategy development. In this paper, we have proposed an approach to apply the Logarithmic Fuzzy Preference Programming (LFPP) and the Fuzzy Ratio System (FRS) techniques to resolve this issue. To propose a comprehensive approach, the strategy canvas concept, the four actions framework of the blue-ocean strategy model, and the competitive strategy development techniques of the Judo Strategy model can be employed for problem formulation. To check for applicability, the proposed model was applied to a case of X Tile and Ceramics Company. This research applied a combination of the Judo Strategy and the blue-ocean model in the form of a BSC strategic planning to develop strategic objectives as well as utilized the LFPP and FRS techniques to rank the objectives based on their strategic goals.

The balanced scorecard framework with a hierarchical، multilayer، and causal-effect structure can shed light on the growth path and pave the development steps، which in addition to monitoring the financial goals. It also considers and controls the other effective and driving factors. In this study، after reviewing the balanced scorecard، a model was proposed in addition to extract the strategic objectives and strategic destinations. The importance of strategic sestinations was determined using Fuzzy Logarithmic Least Deviation method. The priority of objectives based on destinations was ranked through fuzzy similarity technique. In final step، the organization''s strategy map was drawn. Hence، ALPHA Company was selected and the proposed model was implemented with the cooperation of senior managers of the organization. The results of this investigation also indicated that the main strategic objectives were located in the learning and growth perspective of the company''s strategy map، which helped the organization achieve its strategic destinations.