The effect of corporate social responsibility on sustainable development with the mediating role of employee participation in knowledge-based companies

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sustainable development is a process that envisions a desirable future for human societies in which living conditions and resource use meet human needs without compromising the integrity, beauty, and stability of vital systems. Knowledge-based companies today are among those companies that act as factories for converting knowledge into goods and services. In this regard, organizational social responsibility can be the basis for the sustainable development of companies and organizations. Therefore, this research aims are to examine the role of the organization’s social responsibility for sustainable development in terms of mediating the participation of employees of knowledge-based companies.                                                                                                                                METHODS: This research is applied in terms of purpose, descriptive survey and correlation in terms of method. Field and library methods, literature reviews, and standard questionnaires were used to collect information. The statistical population consisted of 578 senior and middle managers of knowledge-based companies in the Science and Technology Park of Sharif University of Technology, Tehran- Iran, and 231 people were sampled using Cochran's formula method and stratified random sampling. A standard questionnaire was also used to collect information. The validity of the questionnaire was checked and confirmed using convergent and divergent validity and confirmatory factor analysis and its reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, joint and combined reliability. Finally, the collected data was analyzed using SPSS and smartPLS software’s.FINDINGS: Based on the results of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the significance of this test was calculated for all indicators less than 0.05 and 0.000, and due to the lack of normal distribution of the data, the smart PLS software was used. The overall fitting criterion was calculated to be 0.551, which means that the model fits well. When testing the main hypothesis, a coefficient of 0.408 was calculated, showing that employee participation explains 40% of the impact of social responsibility on sustainable development. The path coefficient of the sub-hypotheses for these relationships is above 0.5 and the significance is above 1.96. It can be said that the sub-hypotheses of the research are confirmed.CONCLUSION: According to the indicators obtained, the organization’s social responsibility positively and significantly impacts sustainable development and employee participation. The positive role of employee participation in sustainable development was also confirmed. Finally, the results showed that employee participation can mediate the impact of social responsibility on sustainable development

Research Article Presenting a Framework for Ranking Identification System in the Chain Store: Real Case Study of the Iran SHAHRVAND Department Store

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to specify and rank the appropriate automatic identifying goods system for a real case of a department store (Shahrvand department store). The ideas of the experts about the most appropriate identifying goods system in the department store are evaluated and collected by the brainstorming method, the three types of identification system which are specified by the brainstorming method are: RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification), Barcode and OCR (Optical Character Recognition). In order to ranking the achieved automatic identification systems and helping the management of the department store for decision making, the promethee (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) method is selected which has the most conformity with this research between the all MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) method. Therefore, by consideration of two approaches: "efficiency of identification systems" and "convenience of customer purchase" eight criteria are extracted for ranking the identification system. Finally, the RFID system is preferred to other automatic identifying good systems by the used method in the research

An Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System for Supply chain Agility Evaluation

Nowadays, in turbulent and violate global markets, agility has been considered as a fundamental characteristic of a supply chain needed for survival. To achieve the competitive edge, companies must align with suppliers and customers to streamline operations, as well as agility beyond individual companies. Consequently Agile Supply Chain (ASC) is considered as a dominant competitive advantage.  However, so far a little effort has been made for designing, operating and evaluating agile supply chain in recent years. Therefore, in this study a new approach has been developed based on Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) for evaluating agility in supply chain considering agility capabilities such as Flexibility, Competency, Cost, Responsiveness and Quickness. This evaluation helps managers to perform gap analysis between existent agility level and the desired one and also provides more informative and reliable information for decision making. Finally the proposed model has been applied to a leading car manufacturing company in Iran to prove the applicability of the model