21P. Customer-centric Model for Performance Management in Banking Industry Using Soft System Methodology

This research uses soft system methodology in exploring a real world problem in managing the performance of banks’ branches. In the first step, a rich picture is drawn based on the semi-structured interviews with experienced personnel and managers of Iranian commercial banks. Extracting a rich picture about the problem situation and roots of the problem, and based on literature review and well-known theories including resource-based view of the firm and service-profit chain, the paper proposes a conceptual model for customer-centric performance management system (PMS). The proposed model suggests an integration of customer relationship management system and PMS using customer lifetime value metric in managing the bank’s performance. The paper also discusses the benefits of this metric. In practice, the model has a potential to provide more strategic use of information system (IS) by increasing the use of managerial knowledge and strategy making being extracted from IS

Investigation the Effect of Relationship Quality, Performance and Exporter Satisfaction on Continuing Export- Import Relationship

The purpose of this study is at reexamining the initiative conceptual models to investigate how relationship quality affects export performance, to what extent export performance affects exporter satisfaction, and to determine whether exporter satisfaction ultimately affects the expectation of continuing the export-import relationship in an emerging market like Iran’s industrial markets. The paper reports the findings of a survey of 389 respondents from the industrial markets in Iran, chosen from a selected sample. The responding exporters and importers were located in Tehran. The data were analyzed using the Lisrel software. The results support all the hypotheses, indicating that there is a significant relationship between exporter, importer relationship quality and financial and strategic export performance. Additionally, positive relationships between financial export performance and exporter satisfaction and between exporter satisfaction and the expectation of continuing the relationship are shown. The findings have practical implications for managers and policy-makers interested in developing effective strategies for building and maintaining high quality export-import relationships, especially in the context of an emerging market in developing countries. In order to accomplish the research goal, the main constructs from two influential streams of literature – social exchange theory and the disconfirmation of expectation theory are utilized

Broadband-tunable LP01_{01} mode frequency shifting by Raman coherence waves in H2_2-filled hollow-core PCF

When a laser pump beam of sufficient intensity is incident on a Raman-active medium such as hydrogen gas, a strong Stokes signal, red-shifted by the Raman transition frequency {\Omega}$_R$, is generated. This is accompanied by the creation of a "coherence wave" of synchronized molecular oscillations with wavevector {\Delta}{\beta} determined by the optical dispersion. Within its lifetime, this coherence wave can be used to shift by {\Omega}$_R$ the frequency of a third "mixing" signal, provided phase-matching is satisfied, i.e., {\Delta}{\beta} is matched. Conventionally this can be arranged using non-collinear beams or higher-order waveguide modes. Here we report collinear phase-matched frequency shifting of an arbitrary mixing signal using only the fundamental LP$_{01}$ modes of a hydrogen-filled hollow-core PCF. This is made possible by the S-shaped dispersion curve that occurs around the pressure-tunable zero dispersion point. Phase-matched frequency shifting by 125 THz is possible from the UV to the near-IR. Long interaction lengths and tight modal confinement reduce the peak intensities required, allowing conversion efficiencies in excess of 70%. The system is of great interest in coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy and for wavelength-conversion of broadband laser sources.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, supplementary materia

Hybrid photonic-crystal fiber

This article offers an extensive survey of results obtained using hybrid photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) which constitute one of the most active research fields in contemporary fiber optics. The ability to integrate novel and functional materials in solid-and hollow-core PCFs through various postprocessing methods has enabled new directions toward understanding fundamental linear and nonlinear phenomena as well as novel application aspects, within the fields of optoelectronics, material and laser science, remote sensing, and spectroscopy. Here the recent progress in the field of hybrid PCFs is reviewed from scientific and technological perspectives, focusing on how different fluids, solids, and gases can significantly extend the functionality of PCFs. The first part of this review discusses the efforts to develop tunable linear and nonlinear fiber-optic devices using PCFs infiltrated with various liquids, glasses, semiconductors, and metals. The second part concentrates on recent and state-of-the-art advances in the field of gas-filled hollow-core PCFs. Extreme ultrafast gas-based nonlinear optics toward light generation in the extreme wavelength regions of vacuum ultraviolet, pulse propagation, and compression dynamics in both atomic and molecular gases, and novel soliton-plasma interactions are reviewed. A discussion of future prospects and directions is also included

Temporal condensed matter physics in gas-filled photonic crystal fibers

Raman effect in gases can generate an extremely long-living wave of coherence that can lead to the establishment of an almost perfect periodic variation of the medium refractive index. We show theoretically and numerically that the equations, regulate the pulse propagation in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers filled by Raman-active gas, are exactly identical to a classical problem in quantum condensed matter physics -- but with the role of space and time reversed -- namely an electron in a periodic potential subject to a constant electric field. We are therefore able to infer the existence of Wannier-Stark ladders, Bloch oscillations, and Zener tunneling, phenomena that are normally associated with condensed matter physics only, now realized with purely optical means in the temporal domain

Raman-induced temporal condensed matter physics in gas-filled photonic crystal fibers

Raman effect in gases can generate an extremely long-living wave of coherence that can lead to the establishment of an almost perfect temporal periodic variation of the medium refractive index. We show theoretically and numerically that the equations, regulate the pulse propagation in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers filled by Raman-active gas, are exactly identical to a classical problem in quantum condensed matter physics - but with the role of space and time reversed - namely an electron in a periodic potential subject to a constant electric field. We are therefore able to infer the existence of Wannier-Stark ladders, Bloch oscillations, and Zener tunneling, phenomena that are normally associated with condensed matter physics, using purely optical means. (C) 2015 Optical Society of Americ