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Knowledge is a key driver for the competitive success of organizations, but about 90 percent of organizational knowledge is inside employees’ minds with personal essence; therefore, this paper provides valuable vision for managers by exploring knowledge acquisition (KA) techniques and personality type. The purpose of this paper is to examine KA techniques and explore the impact of personality type on the KA process in the aerospace industry.

This paper examines KA techniques through an empirical study involving 83 participants to take part in KA sessions. For exploring techniques, a questionnaire was used, and also the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was used to identify participants’ personality type. The impact of personality type on KA processes was determined by correlation analysis.

Analyses confirmed some association between the type of personality and KA process. In addition, the findings of exploring questionnaire items showed that participants gave the laddering technique the highest rating.

The paper may be of high value to researchers in the field of KA, especially in aerospace industries, because there is very little experimental investigation of KA, and it also provides valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help researchers to select appropriate KA techniques.

This study aims to propose a quantitative approach to reduce the number of suppliers in an organization. This method is based on grouping, and different parts are grouped based on the capabilities they need and are allocated to suppliers who have these capabilities. In this regard, an integrated model for supplier reduction and grouping of parts using a group technology-based algorithm is proposed.

Design science research methodology was used in this study. The main problem under investigation is a large number of suppliers in an organization’s supply base. The proposed model was used to solve this problem in the electric motor industry.

The results of implementing the proposed model in the electric motor industry showed that reducing suppliers had a significant effect on reducing cost, increasing information sharing, increasing supplier innovation and technology, enhancing the relationship between buyers and sellers and reducing risks in the production process.

From a managerial point of view, reducing the number of suppliers plays an important role in the company’s overall strategy, and seems to be a prerequisite for building a strong supplier partnership and an effective supply chain, and will have many benefits for the focal company and suppliers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, grouping and formation of product families have never been performed based on the similarity of the operational capabilities required for producing parts, and it has not been addressed as a solution for reducing suppliers.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between personality traits (introversion versus extroversion) and knowledge acquisition (KA) techniques.

The major methodology of the current study is survey. Results are based on 152 usable responses provided by experts in different industries including electronic, communication, information technology, computer and biology. The major analytical technique used is Pearson correlation analysis.

According to the results, there are significant relationships between personality traits (i.e. introversion versus extroversion) and KA techniques.

This study was conducted on data from 152 Iranian experts which limits the generalizability of the results. This limitation can be addressed by future studies conducting similar studies on cross-country samples. Further, due to the analytical technique adopted in this study, causality implications cannot be drawn from the results.

This study reveals linkages between personality traits (i.e. introversion versus extroversion) and KA techniques. Results shed light on the KA process for both scholars and practitioners involved in KA programs in the organizations.

Spurred by the high turnover in the pharmaceutical industry, locating pharmacies inside urban areas along with the high product perishability in this industry, the pharmaceutical supply chain management has recently gained increasing attention. Accordingly, this paper unveils an inventory-routing problem for designing a pharmaceutical supply chain with perishable products and time-dependent travel time in an uncertain environment.

In this study, mathematical programming is employed to formulate a multi-graph network affected by the traffic volume in order to adapt to real-world situations. Likewise, by transforming the travel speed function to the travel time function using a step-by-step algorithm, the first-in-first-out property is warranted. Moreover, the Box–Jenkins forecasting method is employed to diminish the demand uncertainty.

An appealing result is that the delivery horizon constraint in the under-study multi-graph network may eventuate in selecting a longer path. Our analysis also indicates that the customers located in the busy places in the city are not predominantly visited in the initial and last delivery horizon, which are the rush times. Moreover, it is concluded that integrating disruption management, routing planning and inventory management in the studied network leads to a reduction of costs in the long term.

Applying the time-dependent travel time with a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles on the multi-graph network, considering perishability in the products for reducing inventory costs, considering multiple trips of transfer fleet, considering disruption impacts on supply chain components and utilizing the Box–Jenkins method to reduce uncertainty are the contributions of the present study.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the attitude of the managers of libraries located at Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Medical Sciences Universities' training hospitals, on the status of information technology (IT) in the mentioned libraries.

This study employed a researcher‐made questionnaire. The managers of 40 hospital libraries of Iran, Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities formed the population of the research. To analyze the collected data, the statistical software SPSS (version 17) was used.

Results showed that 12.5 per cent of Tehran, 15.6 per cent of Iran and 25 per cent of Shahid Beheshti Universities library managers agreed, to a very large extent, on the application and development of IT and its tools and 93.7 per cent of the managers from all three hospital libraries deemed the application of IT most necessary. The managers believed that the greatest advantage of IT is concerned with the reduction of human efforts (59.4 per cent), and 100 per cent of the managers acknowledged the need for further promotion of their skills in a wide variety of IT issues. In total, 16.1 per cent at Tehran, 12.9 per cent at Iran and 29 per cent at Shahid Beheshti University considerably approved of formal education for the promotion of their librarians' skills.

This study is a step towards acknowledging the contribution, status, and value of hospital libraries to the health sector by the library managers in theory and practice, in the shadow of considering their librarians as network experts, information media and system designers, and technology experts.

The purpose of this study is to assess the e-readiness status of libraries in the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in terms of four dimensions – human resources, electronical infrastructure, network services and programs and enhancers of the networked world.

The study population consists of 11 libraries of the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, including the central library and 10 faculty libraries. The data collection instrument is a questionnaire prepared by the researchers that has been designed on the basis of the “e-readiness assessment of Iranian academic libraries model”. Depending on the respondents there are three parts to the questionnaire: questionnaire for managers, staff and information and communication technology (ICT) officials. Their reliability and validity have been proved.

The libraries of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences had an average to high status in terms of “human resources” with a score of 2.32, “electronic infrastructure” with a score of 2.48, “network services and programs” with a score of 2.09 and “networked world enhancers” with a score of 2.37 out of 4. In total, these libraries had an average to high status in terms of e-readiness, with a score of 2.29.

The findings of this study can help the library administrators and officials of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences to plan improvements to the situation of ICT.

This study aims to investigate the most effective enablers and tools for inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition in public policymaking organizations.

Based on a literature review, the study summarized 51 individual, organizational, technological and inhabitant-related enablers of inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition, as well as 36 technological and social tools. The study assessed the effectiveness of these enablers and tools based on two rounds of a Delphi study targeting 31 policymakers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was assessed to determine consensus among participating policymakers.

The findings indicate that the most effective enablers were inhabitants’ willingness to get involved, information technology (IT) infrastructure, IT staff support and inhabitants’ trust in policymakers. Additionally, the study found that the most effective tools for inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition included meetings, interviews, social media and field visits.

Inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition is an important social and economic force that will drive change in any society by enabling the implementation of innovative ideas and practices. A review of the relevant research shows that despite the usability of inhabitants’ knowledge, the degree to which inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition is integrated into the public policymaking system remains unclear. This study of inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition from the policymaker perspective provides a better understanding of the inhabitants’ knowledge acquisition process in policymaking organizations.

The present study aimed at developing and validating a self-development training package and determining self-development's effectiveness on job variables and human capital agility among secondary school principals in Isfahan.

In the first phase, the researcher conceived a full version of the self-development training package by studying the theoretical evidence of research and interviewing experts as well as using content analysis. The questionnaire was presented to several experts (n = 8) in that field of study for evaluation after compiling the initial version of the self-development training package, with the aim of determining the face and content validity. In the second phase of the study, the effectiveness of the self-development training package was experimented on secondary school principals using a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design and follow-up with a control group.

The evaluation results were suitable for the training package based on the proposed Lawshe method. The results also indicated that the implementation of a self-development training package in the experimental group had a significant effect on job performance and its dimensions, as well as human capital agility. The effect of the training package on increasing job performance in the post-test stage was 55.3% and was 50.2% in the follow-up stage. Also, the effect of this package on increasing the agility of human capital in the post-test phase was equal to 34.8% and was equal to 28.9% in the follow-up stage.

Question 1: What are the components of a self-development training package? Question 2: What is the credibility of the developed training package from the experts' point of view? Question 3: Does the self-development training package have an effect on job performance and its dimensions? Question 4: Does the self-development training package have an effect on human capital agility?.