Base on site visit and pilot surveys with experts in one of the largest Iranian refineries, entities and activities of that refinery extracted. Then RFID tags and sensors network considered as a technology on different activities of refinery. With help of recommended peripherals and using RFID, an integrated model proposed. Base on this integrated model MIS systems will be come out of the heart of this integrated model to analysis the networks data, monitor these data, alert departments and manage the tasks and transportation or control crisis. Finally from these MIS systems a simple reflex intelligent agent will be born which will be used as operator assistance base on fixed pre rules.
In line with the growing consciousness among tourists about their impact on the environment, there is an increasing interest for more sustainable holiday alternatives. Therefore, ecotourism, that is: the travelling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated areas with the specific objective of studying, admiring and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural manifestations (both past and present) found in these areas, is currently growing at a rate much higher than the general tourism industry. Although the marketing community have responded to the general call for more research on sustainability in tourism, the extant literature appear to lack an integrative framework that incorporates antecedents of ecotourism intention and paying premium for ecotourism offerings. The present study drew from TPB and Inglehart’s materialist-postmaterialist assumptions in explaining the antecedents of intention to visit ecotourism destinations and willingness to pay a premium price.
"The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope" (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; 1881-1955). This hope may rely on sustainable development and sustainability of corporations. Corporations have found that one way to achieve sustainability is to establish it in cooperation with their suppliers. Existing research, however, offers limited insights into sustainable supply management and effective buyer-supplier cooperation.Based on the literature on purchasing sustainable responsibility (PSR), commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing, and the triple bottom line of sustainability as an interconnection among economic, environmental, and social issues, a conceptual framework has been developed. By adopting the concepts of PSR and buyer-supplier cooperation, this thesis proposes that buying firms can enhance sustainability performance of suppliers, thereby improving suppliers‘ adoption of environmentally and socially responsible capabilities. To explore this proposition, this study develops and tests a number of hypotheses concerning the direct relationships among PSR adoption, buyer-supplier relationship, and sustainability performance of suppliers. Also, a set of hypotheses regarding how a buyer‘s dependency on sustainable suppliers moderates their relationship has been developed so as to offer more precise insights to practitioners as well as scholars. In testing the study hypotheses, the researcher used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop the research instrument. The survey instrument captures the opinions and views of a sample of 400 Swedish purchasing professionals who have dealt with sustainable purchasing for at least one year. After data collection, a structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the data and test the research hypotheses.The results concerning the direct-effect hypotheses indicate that the buyer-supplier relationship can be improved by adoption of sustainable purchasing. Also, buyer-supplier cooperation can improve the sustainability performance of suppliers. This thesis also shows that suppliers‘ adoption of PSR directly leads to improvements in their sustainability performance. Regarding the analyses of moderator effects, results indicate that some moderating effects exist. Findings indicate that the buyer shows lower levels of trust in, commitment to, and cooperation with suppliers in highly dependent situations.Overall, this thesis offers empirical results evidence that PSR is an effective approach to improve the buyer-supplier relationship and boost the sustainability performance of suppliers. The results of the direct and moderating-effect hypotheses lead to recommendations to buyers and suppliers regarding important factors to consider when making PSR adoption decisions.
The goal of this research is to demonstrate that the financial performance of the current year in Swedish steel SMEs is dependent on the amount of maturity of supply chain processes. This is examined by considering current supply chain process maturities of the firm together with financial performance of prior years. It was found that the delivery process of supply chain processes and prior cost of goods sold (COGS) have an effect on current COGS. Additionally, prior inventory and plan process of the supply chain have a positive and negative effect on inventory turnover respectively.
Stakeholders expect corporations to improve their sustainability performance through observing environmental and social demands, and corporations respond to these requirements through applying corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR can be achieved by designing a sustainable supply chain in cooperation with companies along the supply chain. The stakeholder pressure on corporations to become sustainable transfers across the supply chain to suppliers. Buying firms manage the relationship with suppliers through supply management. Then, supplying managers’ attention to customer’s sustainability demands and reflecting such demands in their supply can improve the sustainability performance of the suppliers. This improvement in performance of suppliers emanates in supplied products and services and it gives buying firm a comparative advantage against competitors. Accordingly, sustainable supply management and buyer-supplier cooperation on achieving sustainability can address the sustainability concerns of the current business world. However, very few existing studies have considered the impact of sustainable supply management on improving sustainability performance of the buying firm. The current study goes beyond improving the sustainability performance of the buying firm. Specifically, the present research illustrates how sustainable supply management and buyer-suppliers cooperation can boost sustainability performance of the suppliers
In this research we will investigate the effects of using information systems on the managing of supply chain in an ongoing business and we recommend some solutions for upstream, middle and downstream supply chain sections of Starbucks and then we will integrate them and will give solutions. The case we will work on is Strabucks Company. After analyzing the SWOT of Starbucks working on supply chain began and upstream, internal and downstream will be investigated. Some e-solutions recommended as follows: for downstream using transportation and distribution, mail order and warehousing; for upstream using EDI and then for whole supply chain using SCM, ERP and an integrated ERP/SCM. This research is also applicable for Iranian food and agricultural products in category of distributing and retailing. Cross enterprise integration has a high degree of importance in SCM of enterprises, so further researches encouraged to keep on this work in order to develop frameworks for cross enterprise integrations. Also later researches in this category which consider Iranian cases are encouraged.
The purpose of this research is to study why a few social networking sites (SNSs) succeed, while many others fail. Collecting data from 89 Facebook users reveals that electronic word of mouth (EWOM), ease of use, source credibility, information usefulness, and user participation contribute to the success of SNSs.
This research is a content analysis of 1502 peer-reviewed articles on sustainability. The aim is to investigate emerging themes and trends in this area of research and move towards recommendations for researchers to consider when developing their work in sustainability research. By exploring and tracking sustainability literature in the business and management disciplines over a 20-years period, patterns emerge that could provide a better understanding of the trends within authorship, research topic, and the themes and concepts being studied. One interesting contribution of this study is introducing the concept of the “4Ps of sustainability research,” which emerges by reviewing this area over time. The results suggest that the evolution of sustainability research can be summarized in organizations and firms moving from Principles and Policy towards Practice and Performance during over 20 years of sustainability efforts. This paper also discusses the creation of sustainability value and evolution of businesses to sustainability knowledge centers. It adds to the related literature, by proposing a new way of categorizing sustainability research over time, and introducing a framework for theory building in this area of research.
This article analyzes 12 years of recent scholarly research on consumer behavior published in the five leading international journals in this field. Analyzing academic contributions to a specific area of research provides valuable insights into how it has evolved over a defined period. The approach was to briefly discuss content analysis and its application in scholarly literature review studies. The methodology used here involves the classification of topics to evaluate key trends in consumer behavior literature. It includes a ranking of topics published, typology of the published articles, the research classification in terms of methodologies, and analysis techniques. The most cited articles in the field and within each journal are also examined. The comprehensive literature review of consumer behavior research undertaken in this article could advance the discipline of consumer behavior research by elucidating the evolution of consumer behavior literature in the studied period.
As more people choose to obtain their news online, most notably young people, it became of interest to look at the changing habits of online news consumers. Using conjoint analysis of Swedish college students, this paper aims to answer the question, which news attributes within various news categories are most preferred by today’s online news consumers? Results indicate that accuracy and source credibility are the most important attributes across many news categories, followed by immediacy. Interestingly, interactivity was, overall, the least preferred attribute for young, online news consumers in one of the most Internet-connected countries in the world
The social and environmental responsibility of business has become a major issue in recent years and communicating messages about such initiatives are likely to evoke strong and often positive reactions among stakeholders of every firm. Companies can generate favorable attitudes among their stakeholders by engaging them in CSR activities and eventually strengthen stakeholder-company relationships. As a result, there is a need for companies to communicate their CSR activities more effectively to stakeholders using different media. This paper considers the content of one type of such communications, the CSR report. Trough a content analysis, it looks at how five of top sustainable organizations address their stakeholders in their CSR reports. The readability of such reports for stakeholders will also be evaluated. The results suggest that only a selected number of stakeholders are addressed in the studied CSR reports and these reports found to be not readable enough for the intended audience.
Considering importance of consumers’ understanding of sustainability in shaping their attitude toward CSR and its successful implementation, this research uses the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) to develop a deeper understanding of how consumers perceive sustainability in general and sustainable consumption in particular. Based on the premise that most human communication is nonverbal, we used pictures as the medium of data collection and asked the 52 participants in this study to collect pictures that visualize their perception and understanding of sustainable consumption.
Results show that overall understanding of sustainability exists among respondents; however, the majority of them have very little knowledge about actual and global meaning of sustainable consumption. Moreover, there existed a discrepancy between different age groups’ understanding of sustainable consumption. Hence, knowing the role of individual’s perception and personal values in the behavioral intention formation process, and given the fact that consumers play a vital role in the success CSR activities, this study suggests that knowing consumers and their perception of sustainability is essential to firms for using CSR as a marketing and branding tool.