Search results

The purpose of this paper is to unveil how Johor Bahru resident’s conceptions are affected by various structural housing attributes. The determination of an appropriate combination of housing preferences requires a great deal of involvement to balance a complex interplay of factors. This is attributable to this fact that housing preferences involve multiple-criteria decision-making, as each element has its own perceived relative importance. Accordingly, this study examines the resident housing preferences of Johor Bahru located in southern Malaysia with specific emphasis on the priority of structural attributes of housing preferences.

Using data collected through the theoretical and conceptual framework of non-structural fuzzy decision support system (NSFDSS) applied to facilitate the priority setting process.

Priority lists of preferences for structural housing attributes showing the contribution of each factor within their respective level and not the contribution of that factor toward the overall housing preferences were established.

By providing primary information about how potential buyers of a new house prioritize the different elements of a house design, the obtained results can make a useful contribution to the knowledge of individuals engaged in the housing development industry.

While in examining consumers’ housing choice and preferences, most studies use the hedonic price framework studying the issue from several aspects, this is first study dedicated to establish a priority of housing attribute using NSFDSS.

This study aims to detect the influential factors and their respective variables that affect the effectiveness or demand-driven level of the industrial parks in Iran. A hybrid procedure is sought to be developed, which embraces both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to identify the aforementioned factors and variables.

This study is incorporated with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. To implement the qualitative approach, the researchers used focus groups and the related literature. The quantitative methodology has been carried out via a reliable questionnaire that obtained the viewpoints of 700 experts. The reliability of the designed questionnaire has been investigated through Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. By conducting several one-sample t-tests, it was confirmed that the identified factors and variables are significantly influential on the effectiveness of Iran’s industrial parks. The Kruskal–Wallis statistical test was used to determine the priorities of the factors. This research also used a multi-criteria decision-making method, namely, the weighted aggregates sum product assessment (WASPAS) to rank 15 industrial parks of Khorasan province in Iran according to the identified factors.

Comprehensive analyses have been conducted on the identified factors. Results indicate that the infrastructural facilities factor has the highest priority when it comes to affecting the effectiveness of the industrial parks. After that, industrial land and internal factors take the second and the third positions in terms of importance. A total of 15 industrial parks of the aforementioned province have been ranked by the WASPAS. The ranking offered by the WASPAS has been approved by the experts.

Based on the literature investigations, the authors were convinced that there is a scarcity of studies investigating the influential factors that affect the effectiveness or demand-driven level of industrial parks (especially in Iran). Hence, this research has been conducted to propose a procedure equipped with quantitative and qualitative techniques that detect these important factors and their subordinate variables. By means of the developed procedure of this research, it is possible to locate future industrial parks, plan for establishment of future industrial areas and plan for development of current industrial parks.

Despite the rather adequate physical and human resources available to Iranian state-owned enterprises (SOEs), they have proved not only unproductive and unprofitable but also corrupt in cases due to their corporate governance (CG) systems. This study aims to identify the most important challenges faced within designing, implementing and operating such systems in Iranian SOEs.

A judgmental sampling technique was adopted for the purposes of the present qualitative study to select a heterogeneous group of interviewees in terms of experience and expert knowledge in CG and SOEs. Using 28 semi-structured interviews and the thematic analysis methodology within an exploratory approach, the themes/challenges were extracted from the data thus collected that were subsequently analyzed and explicated.

The 16 challenges derived from the data set were subsequently classified into the four categories of “general assembly deficiencies”, “contextual issues of ownership”, “board deficiencies” and “external managerial constraints”.

This study aims to provide insights into policy-making systems at both national and international levels to gain a better understanding of the contextual factors that could be exploited toward developing and/or reforming CG codes. To improve SOEs, this study also suggests four main solutions to the CG challenges faced within Iran and similar centralized economic planning systems.

The literature on the topic indicates that while a few theoretical and empirical studies have been conducted on CG of SOEs, no study has ever been conducted on similar Iranian cases. The present study provides ample empirical evidence from the CG systems in a state-controlled and centralized economic system to offer new insights into the comparative CG, especially in a developing country like Iran, where the government is the major player in the economy.