Investigation of Nepotism in Public Sector Organizations in Iran and its Impact on Employee’s Performance

Due to dominant culture in the countries in transition, one of the issues to be investigated in these countries is the phenomenon of nepotism in the organizations which, as an environmental factor, could affect the employees’ performance. This study attempts to examine the functions of nepotism in Iranian public sector organizations and evaluate its impact on employees' performance. Research methodology of this study is descriptive- survey.  Thus, after an overview on theoretical bases and for the aim of collecting the required data, 150 questionnaires were distributed among administrative employees of Zahedan Municipality. Our findings showed that nepotism is a challenging issue that affects the performance of employees in the administrative systems of Iranian public sector. It was also found that nepotism, as an environmental factor, has made the performance of organization to be consistent with it, through overcoming intra-organizational factors

Toward a comparative model of Islamic management based on the global model of management philosophy

The present article seeks to analyze the basic patterns of modern management and to provide a comparative model of Islamic management based on the global foundations of management philosophy. To this end, first the global model of producing management paradigm was explained, then the following Islamic principles were applied to obtain a specific adaptive model of Islamic management. During the research process, the philosophical paradigms of modern management were first extracted and categorized from international sources. The findings of this classification show that the ontological paradigms of ontology and epistemology coexist in most management schools and are the basis for distinguishing different management schools from each other. Also, this systematic classification can lead to the extraction of a comprehensive global model for the production of the management paradigm. The research method in this research is comparative. Comparative study is in fact a method of study that puts phenomena together and analyzes them in order to enumerate the points of difference and similarity. Finally, Islamic ontological and epistemological foundations were comparatively placed in a paradigmatic model and a specific paradigmatic model of Islamic management was extracted. This model is formed based on the creation-divine ontology and the divine-theological epistemology

Pro-poor intervention strategies in irrigated agriculture in Asia: poverty in irrigated agriculture: issues and options: Bangladesh

Irrigated farming / Poverty / Irrigation management / Water resource management / Policy / Planning / Institutions / Organizations / Local government / Non-governmental organizations / Legislation / Water users / Participatory management / Public sector / Water allocation / Cost recovery / Households / Income / Expenditure / Irrigation canals / Bangladesh

Study on growth and silvicultural analysis of young stand of Quercus castaneifolia C.A.M. in Neyrang forest, Nowshahr

Oak (Quercus castaneifolia C.A.M.) is one of the most important forest tree species in the Caspian region of Iran and every year huge lands are purely planted by it. The aim of the research was to study characteristics of an even-aged planted stand (25 years old, 1.2 ha) of the species and proper management which lead to suitable tree form in future. For this purpose, diameter at breast height (dbh) and total height of all the trees and volume of 30 sample trees were measured. Results showed that although tree plantation was made only by oak species, but the stand today consists of 10 species as follows: oak (85.2%), horn beam (7.9%), iron wood (0.7%) and other species, including velvet, Cappadocian maple, elm, alder, and lime tree (6.2%). Most of the trees were classified at three diameter classes, including 10, 15 and 20 cm. diameter and height increment for trees with average dbh and total height of 15.3 m. and 16.4 m, were 6 and 66 mm. respectively. Mean dbh and height increment rates were 0.6 and 66 cm per year, respectively. Mean volume increment was 5.13 silve per year per ha. It can be concluded that according to our findings and other similar research results that diameter growth of oak in Iran is faster than its growth in Europe and might be utilized at lower age stage for veneer industry. Furthermore, stand structure in respect to trees form and mixture rate was studied and its trend process into mixed stand was silviculturally discussed and analyzed

Identifying Insomnia From Social Media Posts: Psycholinguistic Analyses of User Tweets

BackgroundMany people suffer from insomnia, a sleep disorder characterized by difficulty falling and staying asleep during the night. As social media have become a ubiquitous platform to share users’ thoughts, opinions, activities, and preferences with their friends and acquaintances, the shared content across these platforms can be used to diagnose different health problems, including insomnia. Only a few recent studies have examined the prediction of insomnia from Twitter data, and we found research gaps in predicting insomnia from word usage patterns and correlations between users’ insomnia and their Big 5 personality traits as derived from social media interactions. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to build an insomnia prediction model from users’ psycholinguistic patterns, including the elements of word usage, semantics, and their Big 5 personality traits as derived from tweets. MethodsIn this paper, we exploited both psycholinguistic and personality traits derived from tweets to identify insomnia patients. First, we built psycholinguistic profiles of the users from their word choices and the semantic relationships between the words of their tweets. We then determined the relationship between a users’ personality traits and insomnia. Finally, we built a double-weighted ensemble classification model to predict insomnia from both psycholinguistic and personality traits as derived from user tweets. ResultsOur classification model showed strong prediction potential (78.8%) to predict insomnia from tweets. As insomniacs are generally ill-tempered and feel more stress and mental exhaustion, we observed significant correlations of certain word usage patterns among them. They tend to use negative words (eg, “no,” “not,” “never”). Some people frequently use swear words (eg, “damn,” “piss,” “fuck”) with strong temperament. They also use anxious (eg, “worried,” “fearful,” “nervous”) and sad (eg, “crying,” “grief,” “sad”) words in their tweets. We also found that the users with high neuroticism and conscientiousness scores for the Big 5 personality traits likely have strong correlations with insomnia. Additionally, we observed that users with high conscientiousness scores have strong correlations with insomnia patterns, while negative correlation between extraversion and insomnia was also found. ConclusionsOur model can help predict insomnia from users’ social media interactions. Thus, incorporating our model into a software system can help family members detect insomnia problems in individuals before they become worse. The software system can also help doctors to diagnose possible insomnia in patients

Strengthening nutrition interventions during antenatal care improved maternal dietary diversity and child feeding practices in urban Bangladesh: Results of a quasi-experimental evaluation study

Background: Bangladesh is urbanizing rapidly, facing challenges of malnutrition, low coverage and poor quality of urban nutrition services. Objectives: We assessed the impact of integrating maternal, infant, and young child nutrition interventions, delivered at urban Maternal Neonatal and Child Health facilities, on maternal dietary diversity, iron-folic acid (IFA) and calcium consumption, and child feeding practices. Methods: We used a quasi-experimental design with a non-random assignment of 20 health facilities in Dhaka to intensive and standard service arms. We conducted facility-based observations and community-based surveys at baseline (2020) and endline (2022) (n=2,455 observations and surveys with 1,678 pregnant [PW] or recently delivered women [RDW] at endline). We derived difference-in-difference (DID) estimates, adjusted for characteristics that differed at baseline or endline, and accounted for clustering. Results: Exposure to antenatal care (ANC) was similar in both arms: two-thirds of RDW received ANC during the first trimester and three-fourths received ≥4 ANC check-ups. Compared to the standard arm, a higher proportion of PW in the intensive arm received counselling on dietary diversity (DID: 45 percentage points [pp]), and a higher proportion of RDW received IFA (25pp) and calcium supplementation (19pp), adequate weight gain (44pp), and appropriate child feeding (27pp). Improvements were greater in the intensive than standard arm for number of food groups consumed (DID: 1.1 food groups) and minimum dietary diversity (23pp); no impact was observed for IFA and calcium consumption during pregnancy. Impacts were observed for early initiation (20pp), exclusive breastfeeding (45pp), introduction of solid or semi-solid foods (28pp), and egg and/or flesh food consumption (33pp) among children. Minimum dietary diversity and acceptable diet remained low in both arms. Conclusions: Intensifying nutrition in government-aligned health services delivered by experienced NGO-run facilities is a feasible model to address the urban health gap, nutrition services coverage, and improved practices

Pro-poor intervention strategies in irrigated agriculture in Asia: poverty in irrigated agriculture: issues and options: Bangladesh

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