The relationship between social responsibility and corporate strategy ensures the competitiveness of companies in the 21 century zero impact market. This strategy is based on the idea that the environment affects the organization of business. JEL classification numbers: R400

Achieving business-IT alignment is one of the main purposes and also challenges of organizations. Many studies have indicated the importance of aligning information systems (IS) function with other business functions. The main purpose of this survey is evaluating business-IT alignment focusing on social and technical dimensions of business-IT alignment in Bank Mellat. The data was collected thr...

We employ the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected from 2006-2011 for over 40,000 firms in 115 countries to study the effect of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification on firm performance measured by sales growth and labor productivity. Our results from both the univariate tests and multivariate regressions show that ISO-certified firms exhibit higher sa...

Development of E-banking has modified the structure of banking business and banking performance, efficiency, risk and challenges which have also been articulately recognized based on the international best practices. E-banking brazenly expedites and streamlines financial transactions via enhancing technology and expanding the bank services in comparison with conventional banking. Accordingly, o...

In recent years, supporting intellectual property right has gained more significance. Intellectual property rights could be considered as legal rights resulting from intellectual activities in industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Today, many countries are seeking practical information about using intellectual property to improve economic growth. Intellectual property rights hav...

This chapter is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of resources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation of capital and consumption in a large cross section of countries. We find that countries that grow fa...

We derive an empirical test for third-order stochastic dominance that allows for diversification between choice alternatives.The test can be computed using straightforward linear programming. Bootstrapping techniques and asymptotic distribution theory can approximate the sampling properties of the test results and allow for statistical inference. Our approach is illustrated using real-life US s...

We develop a Stochastic Dominance methodology to analyze if new assets expand the investment possibilities for rational nonsatiable and risk-averse investors. This methodology avoids the simplifying assumptions underlying the traditional mean-variance approach to spanning. The methodology is applied to analyze the stock market behavior of small firms in the month of January. Our findings sugges...

We propose linear programming tests for spanning and intersection based on stochastic dominance rather than mean-variance analysis. An empirical application investigates the diversification benefits to US investors from emerging equity markets. 5001-6182 Business 4001-4280.7 Finance Management, Business Finance, Corporation Finance Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HG 1576+ Statistics Ba...

We consider the issues of noise-to-signal estimation, finite sample performance and hypothesis testing for the nonparametric efficiency estimation technique proposed in Cherchye, L., T. Kuosmanen and G.T.Post (2001) 'Nonparametric efficiency estimation in stochastic environments', forthcoming in Operations Research. In addition, we apply the technique for analyzing European banks. 5001-6182 Bus...