ابوتراب علیرضایی

Purpose: Technology plays an essential role in any country to achieve sustainable development. Choosing appropriate and advanced technology is one of the strategic decisions of industrial managers. This research discusses the critical factors that should be considered in the process of choosing new technologies based on the competitive mechanism, and accordingly, designs and explains the technology selection model for equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage.Method: The research method is an applied one and in terms of data type, it is a partly qualitative and quantitative research. In the quantitative phase, research data was collected based on the data obtained from the qualitative phase, and using the questionnaire tool. The research data was analyzed using thematic analysis and MaxQda software in the qualitative phase and they were also  analyzed using the TOPSIS technique and meta-heuristic algorithm in the quantitative phase for modeling.Findings: Thirty-four concepts and five categories were identified as technology selection criteria for equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage. The "technical criteria" factor was identified as the foremost priority in equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage. The ranking of the determined categories from one to five were the factors of competitive criteria, strategic criteria, internal criteria, and external criteria, respectively.Conclusion: Finally, using the TOPSIS fuzzy technique, the model of equipping industrial units was presented to help decision-makers and policy makers of downstream petrochemical industries.

< p>The present study models the risk of investment in the petrochemical industry considering the impacts of exchange rate (US dollar to Iran''''s Rial) movements using the time series data from November 2008 to March 2019 and ARFIMA-FIGARCH framework. The empirical results prove the existence of the Fractal Market Hypothesis, FMH, and the Long Memory property in both the risk and return of the petrochemical stock index. These findings can be culminated in reaching a reliable and significant model to evaluate the investment risk in the petrochemical industry. In line with this, to analyze the idea whether considering the exchange rate movements matter for assessing the risk management in the petrochemical industry, the effects of exchange rate movements as a crucial source of systematic risk in Iran has been taken into consideration in the process of modelling the risk of investment in that industry. Our results demonstrate that the exchange rate movements have had a direct and significant effect on the investment risk of that industry so that if, on average, one percent change occurs in the exchange rate, the investment risk in this industry changes by 57% in the same direction.

The primary purpose of this study is twofold: Firstly, using the Markov Regime Switching model throughout December 2008 to February 2020, it investigates and compares the nonlinear impacts of exchange rate movements and monetary policies on Petroleum Stock Index, PSI, in Iran. Accordingly, some control variables, such as OPEC oil price, inflation rate, and international sanctions, have also been used to model these relationships more accurately. Secondly, it is an empirical attempt to trace the historical changes in the PSI behavior through distinguishing the precise regime numbers, and the relationships between the exogenous variables and the PSI. Our results confirm that the effects of both exchange rate movements and monetary policies on the petroleum stock market return are direct and significant. More interestingly, the more we move from regime one to regime three, the greater the effects of the research variables on the index, except for the impact of OPEC oil prices. Our empirical findings further suggest as the effects of sanctions intensify, the influences of monetary policy and exchange rate movements would have a more significant impact on the petroleum stock index returns.

The present study models the risk of investment in the petrochemical industry considering the impacts of exchange rate (US dollar to Iran's Rial) movements using the time series data from November 2008 to March 2019 and ARFIMA-FIGARCH framework. The empirical results prove the existence of the Fractal Market Hypothesis, FMH, and the Long Memory property in both the risk and return of the petrochemical stock index. These findings can be culminated in reaching a reliable and significant model to evaluate the investment risk in the petrochemical industry. In line with this, to analyze the idea whether considering the exchange rate movements matter for assessing the risk management in the petrochemical industry, the effects of exchange rate movements as a crucial source of systematic risk in Iran has been taken into consideration in the process of modelling the risk of investment in that industry. Our results demonstrate that the exchange rate movements have had a direct and significant effect on the investment risk of that industry so that if, on average, one percent change occurs in the exchange rate, the investment risk in this industry changes by 57% in the same direction.

There are many opportunities and threats in the decision-making environment for managers, and an organization must use research and information systems to change, monitor, and anticipate this environment. Futurism reflects how tomorrow reality gives birth to tomorrow's reality is. The purpose of this research; Analyzing the role of futures studies in the existing patterns of critical factors of multi-criteria decision-making techniques in operations research using the philosophical assumptions of the classical and critical paradigms and finally determining the appropriate strategy based on these components, to increase success and life expectancy. The present study intends to formulate exploratory scenarios of this knowledge by using the critical uncertainty approach. To develop credible scenarios of knowledge of decision techniques, the opinions of 15 experts in this field were collected using the fuzzy Delphi approach and through the critical uncertainty questionnaire. After extracting the most important uncertainties, plausible scenarios of decision-making techniques were determined with the help of experts. According to the results obtained from the opinion of experts from the critical uncertainty questionnaire, four research uncertainties were identified, identified and the scenario design criteria were used. Each of the four cases, which includes low attention to social issues versus high attention to social issues, low attention to ethical models versus high attention to ethical models, low attention to soft approaches versus high attention to soft approaches, Low attention to complex issues versus high attention to complex issues indicates a specific dual situation in the future. Each of these dual situations indicates uncertainty about the future of multi-criteria decision making. Based on these uncertainties, three scenarios were identified. These scenarios include Achilles heel, phoenix, and heel. Also, semi-structured interviews with the theme analysis approach were used, and the philosophy of past and future approaches in this field was reviewed and critiqued.