درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Today, we confront forces bringing spiritual and ethical values into business which have together has a meaningful concept for each business. Nowadays, the growing attention to ethical issues in workplaces has caused the organizations tend to set ethical codes. However, the results of recent studies show that the ethical organizations will obtain more benefits over a long period and will gain better financial and non-financial performance. So this issue has caused the ethical values of organization be an important part of the organization’s culture. Beside this, ethical issues have always been a noteworthy topic in tourism concepts. Therefore, the present research has examined the effect of ethical values and empathy on nonfinancial performance of tour operators in Tehran through the organizational commitment. The statistical population is composed of employees of tour operators and data were collected by the standard questionnaires. Results show that ethical values and empathy in workplace have a positive and significant effect on organizational commitment and following that non-financial performance of organization.

Blockchain technology is rapidly gaining the attention of financial institutions around the world, especially among decision makers in Islamic financial institutions who are planning to apply this innovative technology into their institutions activities which could be an upright solution for their issues and challenges. This paper contributes to the emerging literature on financial technology by discussing some of the innovative applications of blockchain in Islamic financial institutions. In addition, this paper sheds light on the main opportunities and challenges facing application of Blockchain Technology in the Islamic financial industry and highlight the way forward to address these issues. Relying on the previous literature and analysis; this paper confirms the enormous opportunities for utilizing blockchain technology in various Islamic financial applications such as Waqf, Zakat and Sukuk. On the other hand, the main challenges towards implementing blockchain in this industry are the complexity of Islamic finance products added to the opacity of its application which end up with unclear regulations and lack of standards.

Nowadays, the great benefits of cloud computing have dramatically increased the number of e-banking users. Hence, the competition in the banking industry has boosted and managers need to evaluate their branches on a regular basis. To this end, this study aims to evaluate cloud-based banking systems based on the Quality of Service (QoS) attributes using the Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis (DNDEA) model. The main advantage of this research is that the efficiency of cloud-based bank branches can be estimated more realistically according to their internal structure over a specific time span. To conduct the experiment, 40 bank branches in Iran are analyzed by considering between-period and divisional interactions during 2018-2019. A cloud-based bank branch is conceptualized as a set of three inter-connected divisions including capabilities, intermediate process, and profitabilities. Some outputs of sub-DMUs 2 and 3 are treated as desirable and undesirable carry-overs between consecutive periods. In addition, the cost items and QoS attributes are considered as the inputs and outputs of divisions, respectively. The results indicate that 28 bank branches were efficient and all of the inefficiencies fall in divisions 1 and 3. Moreover, the number of efficient branches has been reduced from 2018 to 2019.

The purpose of this study is to present a gray marketing model using the role of influencers in social media. This research has been collected in terms of practical purpose and in terms of data collection method, quantitative-qualitative, it means using a questionnaire and interview. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experienced professors. The reliability of the questionnaire was also assessed using Cronbach's alpha method. The statistical population of the study consists of two sections: food consumers and faculty members, experts who had the most information in the field of gray marketing and the role of  virtual influencers. 384 were selected from the first population after determining the sample size using Cochran's formula. From the second community, 14 people were selected and their opinions were qualitatively analyzed. In quantitative data analysis, the structural equation approach was used and in qualitative data analysis, Grounded theory approach method and in-depth interview were used. Findings of this study were extracted in the qualitative part of the variables of causal factors, contextual factors, intervening factors, and outcomes and the findings of the quantitative section showed that the coefficient of variable path of parallel factors and parallel imports is 0.906 and also t-statistic is 11.328 and the coefficient of variable path of parallel factors and parallel imports is 0.992 and t-statistic is 13.476. The coefficient of variable path of interfering factors and parallel import is 0.591 and t-statistic is 8.017. Also, the coefficient of the variable of consequences and parallel imports is 0.755 and also the t-statistic is 9.705. Finally, the variable path coefficient of strategies and parallel imports is 0.673 and the t-statistic is 8.627.

This paper describes an alternative view of the internationalization process in higher education by comparing the traditional and non-traditional indicators on how the level of internationalization is measured; additionally, barriers that exist on both sides are reviewed and discussed. As higher education institutions are very accustomed to and focused on the number of international students, international cooperation agreements, visiting guest professors and international projects, another dimension could be added if we start to account and measure things that are happening in the digital communication, online data exchange, usage of mobile devices and other technologies. Authors argue that it would be necessary to include this perspective in the development of internationalization strategies, institutional development plans as well as external outreach tactics. The paper is based upon empirical knowledge coming from Erasmus+ KA2 project and a brief institutional self-assessment performed by Riga Technical University International Cooperation and Foreign Students Department.