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This study aims to develop and apply a process model for prioritizing and selecting basic research projects in developing countries.

Basic research is mainly funded by governments and since, unlike technological research, it does not have clear business goals, its prioritization is one of the complicated issues in formulating science and technology policy. Adopting a design science research methodology, the authors chose a general framework for project portfolio selection as an appropriate artifact for solving this problem. By customizing it for two specific features of this study, i.e. national scale of the problem and the basic nature of research proposals, the authors developed the proposed framework for solving the problem of priority setting.

The process for selecting basic research proposals consists of several steps, which can be categorized into eight steps including strategic decisions, preparation, pre-screening, evaluating individual proposals, screening, portfolio selection and monitoring. This study emphasizes the necessity of defining goals that can be evaluated for the national basic research portfolio, as a key strategic decision. Evaluating individual proposals is a peer-review-based process. In contrast, portfolio selection is done through a zero-one linear programming model. The validity of the proposed framework has been confirmed based on the data obtained from the Iran National Science Foundation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, in this research, for the first time, a mathematical model for prioritizing basic research at the national level has been presented, which effectively contributes to policymaking regarding the development of an optimum national research portfolio.

Resource allocation has always been a critical problem with significant economic relevance. Many industries allocate the resources based on classical methods such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The lack of OEE factors’ weight, how it is defined, analyzed, interpreted and compared in OEE and selection of unrealistic weights, self-appraisal and disability of complete ranking in DEA are challenges that are possible to occur. These defects may result in unfair allocation of the resources. This study aims to overcome the mentioned weaknesses.

In this paper, an approach using a set of various DEA models and Nash bargaining solution (NBS) is designed to solve the resource allocation problem based on OEE, among a set of comparable and uniform DMUs (decision-making units) in a fair way.

The results show that a unique Pareto optimal allocation solution is obtained by the proposed DEA–NBS model among the DMUs. This allocation is more acceptable for players, because the allocation results are commonly determined by all DMUs rather than a specific one. Furthermore, the rankings achieved by the utilized methods and TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution) are compared by Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient to validate the resource allocation plan. The findings indicate that the DEA–NBS method has the best correlation with the TOPSIS approach.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, no research has considered the use of DEA and NBS with OEE.

Even the smartest organizations believe that “good enough is never good enough.” Highly intelligent people may be able to do important things individually; still, it is their accumulated brainpower that allows them to do great things. Collective intelligence means when a group of people do things that seem intelligent. On the other hand, when intelligent people are gathered or hired in an organization, they tend toward collective stupidity and slow-wittedness. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to develop a model of the factors affecting and affected by collective stupidity.

This study was conducted using a mixed-method approach and in two phases: qualitative and quantitative. First, in the qualitative phase and in order to achieve new findings, semi-structured interviews with experts from 12 knowledge-based companies were used to design a conceptual model and formulate the hypotheses. At the end of the qualitative phase, the conceptual model and relationships between variables were drawn. Then, in the quantitative phase, by running structural equation modeling, the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity derived from the qualitative phase findings were analyzed and the research hypotheses were tested in 110 industrial knowledge-based companies.

The results of the qualitative phase revealed that individual, group and organizational factors were the antecedents of collective stupidity, with individual factors having three dimensions, collective ones including two dimensions and organizational ones focusing on the characteristics of managers/companies. It was also found that collective stupidity had individual consequences in three dimensions and organizational consequences in five dimensions; and one-sidedness, non-strategic thinking, organizational injustice and weakness in the management of key personnel were extracted as mediators. The results of the quantitative phase confirmed the research model and showed that individual factors and organizational consequences had the lowest (0.037) and highest (1.084) effect sizes on collective stupidity, respectively.

The study of the phenomenon in a particular context and the difficulty of generalizing the findings to other situations, the small size of the study population due to the disproportionate number of experts to the total staff in the qualitative phase, and the limited participation of experts due to the negative nature of the issue in the quantitative phase. Taking advantage of the diversity of experts' mental abilities through equipping the organization with tools for recognizing collective stupidity, improving collective decision-making, enhancing the efficiency of think tanks and organizational prosperity in the age of knowledge economy, preventing damage to the body of knowledge of the company and reducing social loafing can be the main operational implications of this study.

Using a mixed-method approach for analyzing the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity in this study and examining such a phenomenon in a knowledge-based organizational context and its implementation in a developing country can be among the innovations of the present research. By following a few studies conducted in this field in addition to the organizational pathology of the phenomenon using a fundamental method, this study obtained deep results on how to make the maximum use of experts’ capacities. This was to the extent that in all of the three sections, i.e. the antecedents and consequences of collective stupidity, a new factor emerged.

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is the most common nutritional anemia in the world and a pervasive health problem, especially in developing countries. Children under two years of age are more prone to be affected by IDA. The best strategy to prevent and treat IDA is to use iron supplements. This study aims to examine the factors associated with noncompliance (such as non-utilization or inconsistent usage) of iron drop supplementation among infants between 6 and 24 months old.

Online databases (PubMed, Scopus and SID) were searched to retrieve relevant articles published from inception up to July 2023. Among the 2,177 articles detected, after removing duplicate and irrelevant titles, 21 cross-sectional studies that met the authors’ inclusion criteria were included. Screening for articles and data extraction were conducted separately by two researchers.

The findings suggest that some factors related to mothers, such as education, knowledge, attitude and performance; some factors associated with child such as child’s gastrointestinal and dental complications; taste and smell of iron drops; and birth order and gender are the main determinants of adherence to iron supplementation.

It can be proposed that the most significant factors affecting the feeding of iron drops to children under the age of two include: the level of mother’s awareness, socio-economic status of the household and the occurrence of digestive complications following the supplementation. Given these observations, adopting proper policies toward improving the nutritional awareness of mothers and producing iron supplements with minimal side effects seems crucial.

The aim of this study is to develop a framework for measuring of service supply chain (SSC) maturity process.

The main framework of the SSC maturity was developed by reviewing the concepts and models of SSC, business excellence, maturity and supply chain performance evaluation. Then, the maturity level of each excellence criterion was defined in the proposed model by using the excellence criteria for SSC and the concept of Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA) cycle in combination with the process survey tools maturity model. Based on the excellence criteria and their maturity levels, a questionnaire was designed to practically measure the proposed framework.

The concepts and features of maturity levels defined for each of the excellence criteria were used to implement and operationalize the proposed framework and evaluate the SSC processes.

Through the assessment of the existing status of SSC processes, the findings allow managers to reach a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of such processes. Then, some opportunities are provided for improving each excellence criterion to enhance the performance of each process.

In fact, this study provides guidelines for organizations to measure their progress and performance and improve their management systems. The main advantages of the proposed SSC measurement framework include self-assessment facilitation, calculation of criteria scores and development of uses. The proposed model, like quality and productivity awards, can pave the way for increased competitiveness of the service industry.

This study aims to explore the impact of spatial configuration on behavioral patterns of visitors in the ground floor of health-care spaces.

In this study, the Space Syntax analysis was used to combine visibility graph analysis and axial line analysis with empirical observation of visitors’ activities. Two types of observation methods on visitors were conducted to discover the behavioral patterns of individuals, respectively, named “gate counts” and “people following.”

The outcomes of this research revealed that the spatial arrangements of pathways, public areas, vertical circulations, entrance space, lobby, emergency department, reception desk and pharmacy have a significant influence on the way that visitors perceive the health-care environment.

The current research is limited to two aspects of effective wayfinding (configuration of health care and geometry). Future work can investigate the other potential factors coupled with the current factor as an integrated research for enhancing wayfinding and sustaining accessibility. Another limitation is that the observation results for this study had been conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic and future studies can compare these results with the current COVID-19 situation within health care environments.

A large amount of research has focused on the needs of populations in developed countries. This topic has not been investigated thoroughly by professionals in developing countries such as Iran. Accordingly, this study benefits environmental psychologists and architects by revealing the effective characteristics of legible spaces in health-care environments.

This study aims to establish whether the corporate social responsibilities (CSR) practices of Islamic banks are compatible with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

A documentary research method was applied by examining the annual reports of selected Islamic banks from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, the UAE and Malaysia for 2020, which coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results indicate that Islamic banks discharged various CSR activities and contributed huge funds toward achieving the SDGs of the United Nations. Specifically, the banks prioritized the following CSR sectors: education, health, environmental protection and disaster relief and management. Besides, they provided support to micro and small businesses toward poverty alleviation.

This study examined only CSR reports of the selected Islamic banks for 2020.

The findings have practical implications that may enable Islamic banks across the globe to improve their CSR initiatives, activities and reporting toward realizing the SDGs. They are also helpful to policymakers and regulators for the provisions of policies and regulations to motivate or mandate Islamic banks to effectively improve their CSR practices.

CSR practices of Islamic banks can significantly support the SDGs toward mitigating many economic and social problems.

This study applied a relevant but rarely used method to explore the role of CSR practices of Islamic banks in achieving the SDGs.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for policymakers at both the international and national levels in the twenty-first century; there is no exception for the tourism industry, which is one of the most highly climate sensitive sectors. Tourism researchers have continued to explore the relationship between sustainable tourism and climate change to develop a range of effective strategies for policymakers. This paper aims to review published literature in the areas of sustainable tourism and climate change.

The review maps sustainable tourism and climate change domains between 1996 and 8 January 2016. The review encompasses 95 published documents obtained from the Scopus database on 8 January 2016. The search terms were “Sustainable Tourism” and “Climate Change” combined with Boolean Operator “AND” in the “Article Title, Abstract, Keywords”.

The outcomes of this study are: Identification of trends in research and the most influential papers on sustainable tourism associated with climate change research; evaluation of the contribution of authors, journals and institutions in this area; and guidance for policymakers to develop policies to mitigate the impact of tourist activities on climate change.

The study provides a basis for communication between academics and practitioners by revealing the research trends in sustainable tourism and climate change and by categorizing the contents of prior studies to provide guidance for future studies.

The originality of this paper is in determining possible research gaps and thereby providing guidance for future study. The study also makes a practical contribution by addressing the topics of interest to policymakers.

Privacy considerations have become a topic with increasing interest from academics, industry leaders and regulators. In response to consumers’ privacy concerns, Google announced in 2020 that Chrome would stop supporting third-party cookies in the near future. At the same time, advertising technology companies are developing alternative solutions for online targeting and consumer privacy controls. This paper aims to explore privacy considerations related to online tracking and targeting methods used for programmatic advertising (i.e. third-party cookies, Privacy Sandbox, Unified ID 2.0) for a variety of stakeholders: consumers, AdTech platforms, advertisers and publishers.

This study analyzes the topic of internet user privacy concerns, through a multi-pronged approach: industry conversations to collect information, a comprehensive review of trade publications and extensive empirical analysis. This study uses two methods to collect data on consumer preferences for privacy controls: a survey of a representative sample of US consumers and field data from conversations on web-forums created by tech professionals.

The results suggest that there are four main segments in the US internet user population. The first segment, consisting of 26% of internet users, is driven by a strong preference for relevant ads and includes consumers who accept the premises of both Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID (UID) 2.0. The second segment (26%) includes consumers who are ambivalent about both sets of premises. The third segment (34%) is driven by a need for relevant ads and a strong desire to prevent advertisers from aggressively collecting data, with consumers who accept the premises of Privacy Sandbox but reject the premises of UID 2.0. The fourth segment (15% of consumers) rejected both sets of premises about privacy control. Text analysis results suggest that the conversation around UID 2.0 is still nascent. Google Sandbox associations seem nominally positive, with sarcasm being an important factor in the sentiment analysis results.

The value of this paper lies in its multi-method examination of online privacy concerns in light of the recent regulatory legislation (i.e. General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act) and changes for third-party cookies in browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Two alternatives proposed to replace third-party cookies (Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID 2.0) are in the proposal and prototype stage. The elimination of third-party cookies will affect stakeholders, including different types of players in the AdTech industry and internet users. This paper analyzes how two alternative proposals for privacy control align with the interests of several stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between certain audit committee characteristics like independence and financial expertise with financial reporting quality (FRQ) of the firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE).

The sample includes the 558 firm-year observations from companies listed on the TSE during the years 2012–2017, and the study’s hypotheses were tested using multivariate regression model based on panel data.

The authors find that audit committee independence has no significant effect on corporate FRQ, whereas audit committee's financial expertise significantly improves firms' FRQ. In other words, higher financial expertise of an audit committee can lead to an increase in its FRQ. The findings of the study are robust to alternate measures of FRQ, individual analysis of the research hypotheses for each year and endogeneity problem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the association between audit committee characteristics and FRQ in emerging capital markets, and so, the findings of the study not only extend the extant theoretical literature concerning the audit committee in developing countries including emerging capital market of Iran but also help investors, managers, capital market regulators, policymakers and audit profession regulators to make informed decisions.