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This article aims to analyze the Iranian and American national cultures and to discuss the implications of cultural differences for communication/negotiation styles.

First, the concept of culture is framed and an integrative model of cultural analysis is constructed. Then, building on the extant literature and secondary data, the various traits of American and Iranian national cultures are analyzed and the implications for communication/negotiation are discussed.

It is found that Iran and America portray dissimilar and somewhat opposed cultural orientations that might create substantial obstacles to their bilateral communications/negotiations. Recommendations for more effective communications/negotiations are provided and avenues for future research are pointed out.

Both Iran and the USA are diverse societies and obviously cannot be considered as monolithic cultures. Moreover, any generalization about the national culture is inherently approximate and does not take into account the intra‐country variations. Another major limitation of this study is that it considers culture as static and unchangeable, however, every culture is in constant transformation.

By bringing insights into the American and Iranian cultures, this study provides a better understanding of cross cultural differences and thus it may lead to effective bilateral communications/negotiations.

While this paper provides valuable insights into the Iranian‐American communication patterns, its main originality resides in offering a cross cultural approach to understanding international affairs. Moreover, the results can be extrapolated to other similar situations when Eastern/Islamic and Western cultures are involved.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on key features of Iranian managerial culture by discussing underlying social and organizational consequences.

The paper has been organized in two major parts: conceptualization and discussion. First, the notions of culture and cultural orientations are treated and then, based on the framework proposed by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, cultural orientations of Iranian managers are investigated.

The findings suggest that Iranian managerial culture is characterized by traditional values such as collectivism, past orientation, high hierarchical distance and evil orientation expressed in terms of mistrust and conspiracy.

The findings of this research are limited in terms of scope, cultural orientations and sample size. Further studies may incorporate more cultures and take into account the effects of existing sub‐cultures to present a more enlightening picture.

The findings of this study might be useful for MNEs, NGOs, international negotiators, businessmen/women, expatriate managers and those who are concerned directly or indirectly with this part of the world.

While most cultural research in the area of organizational science has been based on severely narrow, ahistorical and linguistically naïve concepts, this study takes into account not only explicit manifestations of culture, but also implicit and semiotic ones which need to be comprehended. Therefore, the paper is of potential significance at both the theoretical and the practical level.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effect of communication satisfaction (CS) on employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), considering the role of organizational trust as a mediating variable within the Iranian cultural context.

This paper builds a conceptual model, based on literature review, to illustrate the effect of communication satisfaction on employees’ OCBs within the Iranian national context. Out of 194 questionnaires distributed among the employees of Iranian Water Resources Management Company, one of the well‐recognized companies in the Iranian water industry, 173 filled in the questionnaires completely.

The paper addresses the main components forming communication satisfaction, organizational trust and OCBs referring to the role of Iranian cultural dimensions. The result of analyzing the research model by using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique shows that communication satisfaction has a positive effect on organizational trust. It also depicts that organizational trust has a positive effect on OCBs and organizational trust plays a mediating role in the relationship between communication satisfaction and OCBs in an Iranian organization.

The authors developed a new conceptual model based on the literature review and field research to present novel insights into the role of in‐group collectivism, institutional collectivism, human orientation and high‐low cultural context as important cultural dimensions in the study of communication satisfaction, organizational trust and OCBs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze HRM practices in Iran in view of underlying cultural, political and economic factors.

The paper is organized in three major parts. The first part deals with HRM concept and Iranian social context. The second part presents methodology and data analysis. The third part discusses results and illustrates HRM practices in Iranian organizations. The study involves in‐depth interviews with four Iranian managers and data collected from 82 respondents through Likert‐type questionnaires (n=82, rate of response=44 per cent).

The findings in the paper shed light on the main HRM functions in the Iranian public sector. Staffing is marked by pervasiveness of networking, entitlement, compliance with Islamic/revolutionary criteria and high job security. Compensation is described by features such as fixed pay, ascription/seniority‐based reward, and hierarchical pay structure. Training and development programs are found to be unplanned and spontaneous. Finally, the paper shows that the appraisal function receives little attention and tends to be based on subjective and behavioral criteria.

The paper shows that the study is limited in terms of HRM functions, sector and sample size. Further research may make comparison between large/state‐owned and small/private organizations.

The findings in the paper might be valuable for MNEs, NGOs, international negotiators, expatriate managers, investors and those who are concerned with this part of the world.

The paper presents a convenient approach in assessing HRM variations. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data provides a thick description of HRM enriched by secondary data and previous research. Given some commonalities between Iran and other developing countries, the findings might be of potential interest in comparative studies dealing with management transferability.

Human resource management (HRM) is still a new concept in Iran and there is significant research to be done, mainly because of the changes over the past two decades and the recent increase in the re‐emergence of multinational companies (MNCs). An active area of academic debate is the degree to which HRM practices follow the multinational or local partners practice in international joint ventures (IJVs). The research suggests the significance of ownership structure of critical resources. The study also shows the importance of socio‐cultural differences on the transferability of HR practices and whether these are MNC standardised or localised to the host country. Based on the information from the research findings, the main factors which influenced MNC standardisation or localisation of HRM practices were ownership and control of critical resources, the compatibility of national culture and socio‐cultural differences, mutual trust and respect between partners and the compatibility of management styles of the IJV.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors impacting successful Iranian women entrepreneurs. The factors include: self‐efficacy, risk taking, negative stereotypes, and societal culture and traditions.

The paper utilizes interviews conducted with a sample of successful Iranian women entrepreneurs and examines the challenges they had to overcome, as well as their success factors.

Challenges caused by the negative stereotypes and traditions of Iranian society are barriers successful Iranian women entrepreneurs had to overcome. The possession of personal internal factors such as high levels of self‐efficacy and risk taking positively impacted these women's success.

The interviews were not conducted by the authors and were published in Farsi, so there may be interpretation and/or translation issues. However, there are few empirical studies on Iranian women entrepreneurs, and this research is one of the first that contributes to a better understanding of this important group of entrepreneurs. Further empirical research is needed to advance knowledge of Iranian women entrepreneurs.

The paper contributes to the scarce knowledge about Iranian women entrepreneurship, by introducing readers to this unique subgroup of entrepreneurs. It represents a starting point to an important area of research.

This study systematically outlines a multifaceted approach to Persian culture using the anthropological acronym of KERP (kinship, economics, religion, and politics). Possible touch points between the tourist and both modern life in Iran and the historical world of Persian culture are identified. It is proposed that these touch points would be revealed through the knowledge emotions of surprise, confusion, and interest. The chapter examines the detailed accounts of experienced Iranian guides who reported on their tourists’ knowledge emotions about the visited culture. A comprehensive catalogue of the key incidents evoking these knowledge emotions is developed. The chapter further proposes a spectrum of cultural accessibility for Western tourists using this catalogue of emotional responses.

The aim of this article was to understand about cultural representation in these coursebooks and if it is reflected the status of English as a lingua franca.

This article is a report on a case study in the form of content analysis of different categories of culture represented in English language coursebooks used in schools of Iran. In order to do so, references to source, target, international and universal cultures were classified into four aspects: perspectives, products, practices and persons.

Generally, the findings suggested that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented.

Apart from the valuable contributions of the study, the implications of the study are that despite the high frequency of cultural elements, the representation favoured the source culture, while the target, international and universal cultures were heavily under-represented. Therefore, the imbalance in the content of materials on different cultures needs to be redressed. While the main concern of this investigation is the frequency of appearance, which replicates the extent of source, target, international and universal cultures represented in the coursebooks, the impact of the materials, affected by how the cultural elements are used and perceived by teachers and pupils, is beyond the scope of the present study; hence, future studies in this area are deeply encouraged, and it is recommended for further research.

The implications for resolving the imbalance in cultural representation are also being explained.

Bearing in mind the importance of coursebooks as well as the role of culture in teaching the English language, this article aims at understanding about cultural representation within the newly developed Iranian English language coursebooks for schools, an issue that has never been studied by Iranian scholars with respect to the newly published materials.

The purpose of this research is to assess the validity and reliability of the measurement scores related to the learning organization culture, the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ), in an Iranian context. This research can contribute to the growing literature of learning in organizations.

The data were collected through distributing questionnaires to 54 service firms and manufacturing companies in ten major cities of Iran during the third quarter of 2010. Rigorous translation procedures, including both forward and backward processes, have been used to guarantee the relevance of this instrumentation in different cultural contexts. Confirmatory factor analysis, simple item‐internal consistency estimates, and item inter‐correlation analysis were performed to test the validity of DLOQ.

There are five positional limitations. First, this study relies on self‐report and different perceptions of questions can bring about percept‐percept bias. Second, the nature of this research is cross‐sectional which may cause causality among variables. Third, the various organizational levels in the questionnaire can render some misinterpretations while answering the questions. Furthermore, the length of the original questionnaire (43 questions) could cause lack of concentration and boredom, which in turn, can impact the results. Last, two constructs related to performance (knowledge and financial performance) in the questionnaire were omitted.

This study confirms, according to some statistical results, that the Iranian version of DLOQ has produced reliable measurement scores with the construct validity sufficient to measure the learning organization culture in the Iranian context.

Hospitality has been an evident characteristic of Iranian society since ancient times. This chapter discusses the meaning of hospitality from the perspective of the cultural and traditional beliefs present in Iranian literature, religious beliefs, and food customs and deliveries. Reviewing the history of hospitality in Iran yields considerable evidence that this tradition dates to ancient times. This chapter shows that Iranian hospitality has been overlooked in research and suggests that exploring diverse aspects of it can aid tourism practitioners identify areas with potential and improve quality of service in its delivery.