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Institutional changes, in a historical context, through simultaneous evolutionary and metamorphic processes either deform or reform long-enduring institutions. The chapter delves into the Persian history from the early days of the reign of Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh-e Qājār in 1848 to the recent years and traces Persian institutions' historical transformations, which culminated to the Persian women entrepreneurship. Thus, the chapter first sets the historical context in each period and then sheds light on the pivotal issues of each period's women. The undergirding base of the discussions is the assumption of the change in institutions as natural metamorphosis in the animate. Finally, the discussions contribute to the conceptualization of the Institutional Triangulation and in the case of Persia, a cultural-driven triangulation, which has paved the way to the formation of a stupendously hegemonic patriarchal and masculine sociopolitical economy in Persia, that has historically affected women's institutionalization, subjugation, subordination, marginalization, socialization, emancipation, and most recently Islamization phases.

On February 11, 1979, the monarchy rule in Iran was replaced by an Islamic theocracy, and the new government revised textbooks to promote a new identity based on Shia Islam and the Iranian nationalism. Because textbooks are used throughout the world to create national identities and are of interest to educators, an analysis of texts can provide insights into how a nation views itself, others, and its place in the world. Using discourse analysis, this study analyzes an eighth-grade history textbook used in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2004 to understand the role of Khomeini vis-à-vis the Shah and how the regime’s adversaries are depicted. Concepts of grievance and framing are used to analyze the textbook.

In this age of global terrorism, religious scandals, unbridled capitalism, corporate and accounting scandals, greed, wars, and selfishness, the one‐year adventure of a bull‐headed, uncompromising, honest, fearless, conscientious, hardworking, compassionate, and no‐nonsense American by the name of W. Morgan Shuster is a must read for those who are struggling with the questions of accounting, ethics, politics, and self‐interest. Shuster was a lawyer with expertise in governmental accounting and taxation who was commissioned and sent to Iran (known then as Persia) in 1911 to create a system of accounting control, audit, and responsibility accounting for the government of Iran. This is the condensed account of his adventures and what he accomplished in a span of less than eight months. This article is about Morgan Shuster but, more so, it is about the fundamentals of ethics and responsibility in business and governmental affairs. It provides an understanding of how accounting, accountability, and fiscal planning can be initiated from scratch. Shuster was a devout Christian and had decided that his conduct and his association with people should be reflective of the ideals of his faith as well as the ideals of his nation in pursuit of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” for all God's children. Concludes that, perhaps, the so‐called “real world” should reconcile with the conduct and attitude of Morgan Shuster if the human race is to survive.

The results of a study carried out to identify the problems and issues arising in the electric distribution system of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation are presented. The authors are particularly concerned with failures of supply and the principle reasons for those failures are discussed, particularly the domestic overloading problem. Recommendations are made with a view to increasing the reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of the system. It is estimated that the implementation of the recommendations could reduce the number of fault complaints by half and also result in savings in fuel costs of the order of Rs. 1.25 million (approx. £55,000) per annum in the operation of the maintenance teams.

This paper aims to propose a procedure to remove international trade barriers globally. Trade is confronting various barriers in the present world, and this is due to the policies of governments to protect interests of their own citizens. Experience shows that trade barriers end up with incurring losses for both sides (traders) in practice, but a look at history of polemics on trade barriers removal in World Trade Organization (WTO) shows that countries are unable to overcome the obstacles they have created. Trade partners understand that removal of counter barriers is advantageous for both parties. In the meantime, being concerned of other party’s response impedes the benefits of free trade for all parties.

This proposition is based upon Islamic Sufism teachings. The propounded principles and goals are in accordance with high understanding of social and economic subtleties of humankind’s life. The authors try to form and formalize Islamic Sufi teachings to establish a base for compiling new international convention that facilitates international trade in all aspects.

To facilitate and promote international trade relations in short run, interested countries may accept a convention to remove all trade barriers among themselves all at once.

The proposed convention does not go against General Agreement on Tariff and Trade and WTO, but it is complementary to both.

The proposed principles are actually shortcuts to what WTO may access in far futures.

Islamic Sufism teachings can lead us to solve current international problems.

WTO has taken important steps to facilitate international trade. To reach the main goal of trade liberalization of WTO, a shortcut solution is proposed here.

Through an examination of macro-historical studies on the governance of Iran, the purpose of this study is to identify the most significant and important events and trends in the rise and fall of Iranian governments and introduce alternative futures in a range of possible, plausible and preferable forms of future governance. To carry out a foresight study of alternative futures of Iranian governance, the authors used futures studies, based on the detection of the most critical driving forces, which are also the most important uncertainties. Futures studies as an interdisciplinary field of study help to identify the events and trends that affect political change and offer scenarios of four alternative futures for the governance of Iran: Smart and Stable Government, Authoritarian Development-oriented Government, Irrational Government and Irrational Breakable Government. The authors believe that Iran’s endeavors to promote democracy, taking the changing international trends into account, make a more trustworthy future for Iran both possible plausible.

Based on macro-history approach and by using “shared history”, future triangle and then scenario planning, the future of Governance in Iran has been analyzed.

Whenever the government has distanced itself from the public and has neglected the trend of international change, it has been faced with a period of collapse and annihilation. And whenever these two important factors are understood, the result is a trend of development and growth. Therefore, the most favored image of Iran’s future relies on the maintenance and promotion of public participation and on increasing attention to the sustainable realities of international relations.

The complexities of events and trends affecting the rise and fall of previous governments of Iran make it necessary to use an interdisciplinary approach to understand the events that have emerged or are emerging in its governance. In this study, from futures studies point of view, transformation of governance has been studied.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intentions.

To test the proposed research model, the authors collected field data from seven telecommunication companies located in the Islamabad Capital Territory of Pakistan. Through a two-wave data collection design, a total of 411 participants reported their perceptions about psychological empowerment and psychological capital at Time 1 and their job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention at Time 2.

Results supported the hypothesized relationships, showing that psychological capital fully mediates the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

This study relied on cross-sectional data, which does not fully satisfy the conditions of establishing causality.

Results of this study will help organizations and practitioners to understand the importance of psychological empowerment and psychological capital and how they positively influence organizational performance, including employee job satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

Drawing upon the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (2000), this study contributes to organizational behaviour literature by proposing and testing psychological capital as an underlying mechanism that can explain the impact of psychological empowerment on employee satisfaction, normative organizational commitment and turnover intention.

The financial policies of the modern world corporations and their investment decisions are generally considered as interrelated because the agency problems, associated with the debt level and its maturity structure, give rise to incentives for overinvestment or underinvestment. The present study empirically investigates the linkage between debt maturity structure and firm investment in a financially constrained environment, using Pakistan as a case study, to determine how the institutional environment in which firms operate affect these decisions and their linkage.

The empirical analysis is carried in a panel data setting using panel regression models as the baseline methods. Moreover, generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimators are used, coupled with the instrumental variables approach, for robustness and improving the efficiency and consistency of estimates.

Results suggest that firms rely more on short financing in Pakistan. Thus, given the capital structure which is characterized by higher proportion of short-term financing, the higher level of leverage is less likely to cause underinvestment problem. However, the underinvestment problem do persists in the firms that have higher portion of long-term debt. These findings imply that the debt-overhang problem may persist even in the financially constrained environments where attractive investment opportunities are limited, and long-term financing is difficult to acquire.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing how corporate investment and financing decisions and their linkage is influenced by the institutional environment of the less developed countries which is characterized by underdeveloped financial markets, inefficient legal system and weak investor protection system.