Ranking influencing factors on relative efficiency of banking industry

Measuring the relative efficiency of banking industry has been one of the most interesting areas of research for the past few years. There are literally various techniques for measuring the relative performance of similar units such as banks including data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative performance of some Iranian banks located in province of Alborz, Iran for two consecutive fiscal years of 2009 and 2010. The proposed study implements stochastic frontier analysis to measure the performance of these banks based on two set of criteria. In the first model, total loans devoted are considered as output and employees, total customersҠinvestment, total fixed assets as well as no-interest deposits are considered as inputs of the model. For the second model, special banksҠcharacteristics such as total economic value of branch, the ratio of fixed assets to total assets, educational backgrounds of employees as well as the level of automation in the system are considered as input parameters of the systems. The results indicate that most bank perform relatively well according to their efficiencies

Professional Ethics and Knowledge Sharing within Supply Chain: the Role of Trust

Background: The paper aims to provide an integrative review of empirical literature on factors affecting knowledge sharing in supply chain, analyzing the various results of the published articles about the topic to find out critical factors. Method: A quality-quantitative mixed method has been adopted in our exploratory study. Delphi method, a qualitative approach, has been initially applied to design a conceptual model for knowledge sharing within supply chain. After this, through a review of literature, 21 articles have been analyzed based on the resulted model to present the critical factors. Finally, the resulting model has been examined and evaluated in the case study, by a quantitative approach. The main instrument of the study is a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population comprises all the managers of Khorasan Electricity Supply Chain in Iran (461 people). 215 of them have been selected as samples, using Stratified Random Sampling. Data analyzed by using SPSS 21 software, Z-test, Friedman test, and Student's t-test. Results: According to the results, a model for knowledge sharing in supply chain has been developed based on 5 dimensions and 38 factors. In addition, Communication, trust, and absorptive capacity of knowledge receiver are primary factors in a majority of articles. Also, inter-organizational trust is at average level in Khorasan Electricity Supply Chain, Iran. Conclusion: This paper will contribute to improve understanding on the role of trust as one of the most important components of professional ethics in promoting the culture of knowledge sharing among members