Mohammad Ali Shafia’s research while affiliated with Iran University of Science and Technology and other places

In recent years, the role of universities in the development of societies has increased. In Iran, as in other countries, universities have made changes to their programs, but it still seems they need some new policies to strengthen the impact of universities on the development of society. While explaining the reasons for the formation of existing universities at the international level, this article attempts to use the framework of Sadra's philosophy to present a new type of university called “wisdom-oriented” university. This university activates the four functions as follows: Graduate education, Development of technology and technical knowledge, Problem-solving and communicating with society (such as industry, government institutions, etc.), and Producing and disseminating of knowledge content. If the wisdom-based university is formed and institutionalized, the following characteristics could be expected: “Avoidance of particularity”, “attention to comprehensiveness and gradual shift to specialization”, “scientific moderation and attention to wisdom”, “fostering creativity, production and accumulation of knowledge content”, “duty-oriented interaction with society”, “unbounded activity”, “continuous effort to come closer to God” and “optimal use of science and technology.”

One of the most trending state-of-the-art technologies due to broadening usages of logistics is Internet of Things (IOT) applications which has been enabled by new expandable platforms which are occupied in many applications like transportation, smart city, smart home and etc. To broaden this field of study there is need to classify and group all documents to find useful patterns and speed up and accurate future studies in order to achieve to greatest results. In this paper, some analysis to fulfil the pattern of studies and determine latest IOT applications in logistics is done. Results demonstrate that new inclines in IOT applications with logistics are embedded in airports and railways and some technologies like WSN, RFID and GIS are top of useful devices in this direction.

This study introduces and applies the Fitrah Tendencies framework to make up for the dearth of studies on academics’ urges to play a part in industry. To this end, 62 academics were selected and interviewed based on Lam’s (2011) typology as to come up with their main motives for engaging in industry. As per the results, new dimensions including the need for fully understanding God, the desire for doing good deeds, and the freedom felt in the economic environment were added to the previously reported factors.

Purpose Much research has been conducted on technology acceptance (TA), which is mainly about the acceptance by one user. As more than one person should be involved in business-to-business TA decision-making, it is suggested that different processes for making a consensus among different stakeholders should be considered. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate a model for essential activities and characteristics of advocators for accelerating the stakeholders’ consensus in the technology acceptance (SCTA). Design/methodology/approach The conceptual model of this research is presented using a thematic analysis of the interviews with the relevant experts and existing literature. Furthermore, the structural equation model was applied for analyzing empirically how advocators’ characteristics and activities affect consensus. In total, 248 respondents completed the questionnaires. Experts’ opinions, Krippendorff’s alpha index, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and goodness of fit indices were applied to verify the reliability of the results. Findings Results show that “being leader” and “being influential” are two main characteristics for the advocators’ team that significantly affect SCTA. Reducing perceived “risk” for each stakeholder, developing a “common understanding” among them and demonstrating “resource readiness” are also the main tasks of advocators leading to SCTA. Originality/value The role of advocators in SCTA has been neglected. The main contribution of this study is identifying the required advocators’ activities and characteristics for achieving SCTA.

Understanding the mechanism underlying the mobile telecommunications technologies (MTTs) diffusion in a country is crucial for telecom planners to know how to accelerate their diffusion by designing appropriate scenarios. Considering the technology diffusion as a bottom-up process, this study is aimed at exploring this mechanism, drawing on insights from diffusion of innovation theory and social network theory. Accordingly, an agent-based model is proposed to investigate how MTTs are diffused in Iran over time. The results of this study show, (1) social network of Iranian society seems more similar to a Watts–Strogatz small-world network than a Barabási–Albert preferential attachment network, where the clustering coefficient is high and average path length is low, (2) compared to the compatibility parameter, the advertisement parameter not only is less influential on diffusion of a targeted MTT (i.e., 4G) but also is not necessary for it, and (3) scenarios having the least number of steps and turning points are more appropriate for continuous diffusion of 4G. The proposed study is empirically validated against real-world data ranging from 7/1/2017 to 12/31/2017. We believe it provides telecom planners insights regarding MTTs diffusion mechanism in a social complex structure and the how of scenario designing for increasing their diffusion.

Nowadays, we are surrounded by a large number of complex phenomena ranging from rumor spreading, social norms formation to rise of new economic trends and disruption of traditional businesses. To deal with such phenomena,Complex Adaptive System (CAS) framework has been found very influential among social scientists,especially economists. As the most powerful methodology of CAS modeling, Agent-based modeling (ABM) has gained a growing application among academicians and practitioners. ABMs show how simple behavioral rules of agents and local interactions among them at micro-scale can generate surprisingly complex patterns at macro-scale. Despite a growing number of ABM publications, those researchers unfamiliar with this methodology have to study a number of works to understand (1) the why and what of ABMs and (2) the ways they are rigorously developed. Therefore, the major focus of this paper is to help social sciences researchers,especially economists get a big picture of ABMs and know how to develop them both systematically and rigorously.

Nowadays, competition is getting tougher as market shrinks because of financial crisis of the late 2000s. Organizations are tensely forced to leverage their core competencies to survive through attracting more customers and gaining more efficacious operations. In such a situation, diversified corporations which run multiple businesses have opportunities to get competitive advantage and differentiate themselves by executing horizontal strategy. Since this strategy completely engages a number of business units of a diversified corporation through resource sharing among them, any effort to implement it will fail if being not supported by enough information. However, for successful execution of horizontal strategy, managers should have reliable information concerning its success probability in advance. To provide such a precious information, a three-step framework has been developed. In the first step, major influencers on successful execution of horizontal strategy have been captured through literature study and interviewing subject matter experts. In the second step through the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) methodology, critical success factors (CSFs) have been extracted from major influencers and a success probability assessment index system (SPAIS) has been formed. In the third step, due to the statistical nature (multivariate and distribution free) of SPAIS, an artificial neural network has been designed for enabling organizational managers to forecast the success probability of horizontal strategy execution in a multi-business corporation far better than other classical models.

In the current conditions of world trade, there are some potential opportunities to achieve highly potential trade relationships among the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group member countries. In accordance with the principles of Shari'ah (Islamic Law), The IDB Group was established in 1975 in order to help the economic development and social progress of member countries and this group now has 56 member countries whichin order to strengthen the cooperation among them, it conducts planning at different levels. In this study, export and import information of the countries which is presented and classified at 255 commodity items in the site of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been used to calculate the trade complementarity cosine of average of exports and imports of member countries during 2010 to 2012 and MATLAB software is used for these calculations. This indicator implies the degree of compliance of export structure of a country with import structure of another country. The results are represented by a 56*56 square matrix that each entry implies the potential degree of trade complementarity between two countries. The priorities of import destinations are also specified based on the degree of higher trade complementarity. However, the analysis of current trade level of member countries indicates that only 16 % of exports are intra-group. For imports, this ratio is 20%. Additionally, among fifty six Group member countries only eighteen countries export more than 30% of their goods to the other members and also, only twenty one countries import more than 30% of their goods from other members. So with regard to such conditions, the establishment of a clearing house in the IDB Group and development of the counter trade among those member countries which have desirable degree of trade complementarity are proposed as an opportunity for effective trade development.

There is no doubt that organizational learning has an important role in forwarding firms towards innovative activities, however, the process of such learning needs focus and control to ensure maximum efficiency. In this paper, we present a general model for the accelerative process of organizational learning in the light of innovation outputs performances such as patents and new products. More specifically, we discuss the number and intensity of learning loops a firm can have between R&D, perceived value of innovation output and market itself. The presented model is tested by empirical evidences from a case study.