Original Research
Mohsen Azari Aghviyeh; Gholamhossein Hosseninia; Mehran Rezvani
Volume 1, Issue 4 , November 2014, Pages 247-263
Abstract
Insurance has always been an efficient tool in facilitating production and increasing investment through the world. Meanwhile, lack of investment has been a constant problem in the agricultural sector, as one of the most vulnerable economic sectors. Hence, insurance, as an effective tool for securing ...
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Insurance has always been an efficient tool in facilitating production and increasing investment through the world. Meanwhile, lack of investment has been a constant problem in the agricultural sector, as one of the most vulnerable economic sectors. Hence, insurance, as an effective tool for securing the return on investment, is likely to solve this problem. The current research is aimed at identifying and analyzing the role of insurance in risk management of modern agribusinesses. In order to fulfil the research objective, a mixed method research was designed and qualitative and quantitative tools were developed. In the qualitative part, the research population includes the experts of agriculture and investment in new businesses, while the population of the quantitative part is composed of greenhouse owners in Tehran province. 9 interviews were carried out in the qualitative part and data were analyzed through open and axial coding. In addition, 137 questionnaires were investigated in the quantitative part. Quantitative data were analyzed by structural equation modelling method. The results demonstrate that various types of risk, including production, market, and environmental risks have a negative effect on the insurance rate, In other words, insurance coverage decreases when risk increases, which is a rational result. Moreover, insurance has a positive effect on investment promotion and can offset the negative effect of risk and lead to an increase in investment and hence, establishment of new businesses in this field.
Original Research
Eghbal Hosseini; Isa Nakhai Kamalabadi
Volume 1, Issue 4 , November 2014, Pages 264-283
Abstract
In the recent years, the multi-level programming problems specially the bi-level and tri-level programming problems (TLPP) are interested by many researchers and these problems, particularly TLPP, are known as an appropriate tool to solve the real problems in several areas of optimization such as economic, ...
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In the recent years, the multi-level programming problems specially the bi-level and tri-level programming problems (TLPP) are interested by many researchers and these problems, particularly TLPP, are known as an appropriate tool to solve the real problems in several areas of optimization such as economic, traffic, finance, management, transportation, computer science and so on. Also, it has been proven that the general bi-level and TLPP are NP-hard problems. The literature shows it has been proposed a few attempts for solving using TLPP. In this paper, we attempt to propose a new function for smoothing the tri-level programming problem after using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition, also we develop two effective approaches, one based on Genetic algorithm, which it is an approximate approach, and the other based on the hybrid algorithm by combining the proposed method based on penalty function and the line search algorithm for solving the linear TLPP. In both of these approaches, by using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition the TLPP is converted to a non-smooth single problem, and then it is smoothed by proposed functions. Finally, the smoothed problem is solved using both of the proposed approaches. The presented approaches achieve an efficient and feasible solution in an appropriate time which has been evaluated by comparing to references and test problems.
Original Research
Mohammad Reza Meigounpoory; Elahe Saffari
Volume 1, Issue 4 , November 2014, Pages 284-294
Abstract
Existence of new service development process is very important for competitiveness, growth and survival of service organizations especially banking system. Customer involvement has been advocated as a potentially powerful tool for developing successful new services, while only very few NSD models try ...
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Existence of new service development process is very important for competitiveness, growth and survival of service organizations especially banking system. Customer involvement has been advocated as a potentially powerful tool for developing successful new services, while only very few NSD models try to explain how to integrate customers in NSD processes. The purpose of this paper is "identifying of the effective factors of customer involvement in launch stage of new service development in banking systems”. The research was conducted as a qualitative methodology and used in-depth interviews with academic experts and managers of banking systems until theoretical saturation state achieved. The gathered data was analysed using axial and open coding methods. The research results show that customer involvement in launch stage of new service development includes totally 13 effective factors of customer involvement that were identified in five axial factors. The results can be used for improvement of customer involvement in the launch stage of NSD process in financial organization.
Case Study
Hiwa Farughi; Seiran Alaniazar; Seyed Hamed Mousavipour
Volume 1, Issue 4 , November 2014, Pages 295-310
Abstract
Nowadays organizations encounter serious challenges such as drastically changes in business environments, increasing competitions, as well as expanding markets and different needs of customers, it seems that having a deep conception of the current processes of organizations and enhance them ...
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Nowadays organizations encounter serious challenges such as drastically changes in business environments, increasing competitions, as well as expanding markets and different needs of customers, it seems that having a deep conception of the current processes of organizations and enhance them is a must for both service and production companies to survive in such competitive and complex environment. One of the modern approaches for improving organizational processes is business process reengineering. In this study, the current condition of Industrial Estates Company of Kurdistan (IECK) has been studied and the key processes of IECK concerning the industrial units have been determined. Then, the problems related to implementation of these processes have been identified through the comments of experts of the organization and industrial units which are settled in Industrial Estates, in addition to investigating the operation of these processes. Afterwards, those processes which have invoked the most dissatisfaction in customers or industry holders have been evaluated through business process reengineering (BPR) methodology; subsequently, some improvement methods have been proposed to remove, modify, review, and change these processes.
Original Research
Mohammad Reza Meigounpoory; Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi; Iran Danehzan
Volume 1, Issue 4 , November 2014, Pages 311-321
Abstract
Development of new technologies, particularly information technology (IT) has a great impact on the health care area and the quality of life style. IT advancement and integration of the internet and digital technologies in mobile health (M-Health) platform has made the health care delivery, affordable ...
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Development of new technologies, particularly information technology (IT) has a great impact on the health care area and the quality of life style. IT advancement and integration of the internet and digital technologies in mobile health (M-Health) platform has made the health care delivery, affordable and accessible around the world through mobile phones. Although the m-Health has many benefits, it causes increasing concerns about improvement of the service quality in this field. Improvement of the M-Health service quality has attracted much attention in the academic and practitioner communities in recent years. However, empirical research in this area is not sufficiently adequate. This paper deals with identifying the factors affecting on m-health service quality which is required by health clients in small and medium-sized enterprises in Iran. This study has been conducted via a qualitative approach which includes semi-structured interviews with 12 professionals and experts of the information technology and e-health fields. Results have been demonstrated based on the encoding method. Furthermore, the findings have been compared with other studies. As a result of this study, a new conceptual model for m-health service quality has been developed. Finally, it is argued that the results of this study are applicable in organizations, which involve in e-health field to improve the quality of mobile services for health.
