Sharif Digital Repository

Mobile technology has become Ubiquitous and common in all over the world from the first years of 21st century. Mobile has been used as a strong media in marketing and specifically in advertising due to it’s unique features and various functions. Currently (2008) mobile media is not used very aggressively in Iran. Considering the quick expansions of mobile networks in Iran and growth of subscribers, it is anticipated that Mobile will affect many businesses and consumer market very soon in Iran. This study is the first academic research in the country on Mobile advertising via SMS. The purpose of this thesis is to provide the better understanding of the Mobile advertising via SMS in high... 

Some firms grow very rapidly, the others much more slowly. In this research we compare the founding strategies of 32 Iranian software industry new ventures that have grown very rapidly with those with much less growth. This study aims to compare these two groups of firms, in order to provide insights into the attributes of rapid-growth software firms founding strategies. Founding strategies, in this research, refers both to the characteristics of the entrepreneurs who establish the firm, and to the decisions regarding initial markets and products. Results indicate that high-growth firms used to have more experienced entrepreneurs (managerial, industry specific, and work experience). In... 

In this dissertation, our aim is to evaluate a model linking “Teamwork Quality” and “Innovative Team Climate”. Teamwork Quality is defined as the quality of interactions among team members that includes six dimensions: “Communication”, “Coordination”, “Balance of Contribution”, “Mutual Support”, “Effort”, and “Cohesion”. Innovative Team Climate refers to shared perceptions of team policies, practices and procedures in support of innovation. This construct is composed of four dimensions: “Vision”, “Participation Safety”, “Task Orientation”, and “Support of Innovation”. Firstly, we hypothesized that there are positive relations between Innovative Team Climate and Teamwork Quality itself and... 

Evaluation of the effects of vehicle characteristics on accident severity is the main objective of this research. In addition to some static and dynamic features of passenger cars, some characteristics of driver and roadway are studied, too. In this research, driver injury severity is modeled as accident severity index. First, the severity of head-on, rear-end, angle and sideswipe accidents are modeled using Binary Logit models. Then, Multinomial Logit models are applied to develop driver injury severity models for head-on and rollover accidents. Finally, Nested Logit model is developed to model severity of head-on accidents to study the performance of different types of Logit models.... 

Opportunities for creating value are shifting from managing tangible assets to managing knowledge based strategies that deploy on organizations' tangible assets: customer relationship, innovative products and services, high quality, and responsive operation processes, information technology and databases and employee capability skills and innovation" (Strategy Focused Organization, Norton, Kaplan; 1996). As organizations' value creating process shifts, learning has become one of the most important factors in value creation, and as a consequence dynamic capabilities creation. This research is concentrated on Electric Distribution Companies in Tehran region and studies knowledge management as... 

Integration of transportation demand management (TDM) policies, as a realistic and effective approach, is a challenging issue in urban policy studies. This study examines the role of transportation demand management (TDM) policy packages on commuters' mode choice in the city of Tehran. The analysis is based on the results of stated preferences survey developed by efficient choice design as a specialized type of fractional factorial design approach. Five policies, namely increasing parking cost, increasing fuel cost, cordon pricing, transit time reduction and transit access improvement, are assessed in considering six modes of travel to work place. A multinomial logit model has been developed... 

Since expansion of communication technology, telecommuting has gained attention from transportation planners as an approach in field of demand management. In this research, joint effects of feasibility of telecommuting for the employees of each organization and the relevant frequency of employees have been evaluated by using the copula model as the most recent conventional way of developing a joint model since the last few years. The result of telecommuting acceptance is that after presenting the project to each organization, the head employer measures the appropriateness of the project for employees and if he reaches a consensus on the success of the project, the employees get involved and... 

The relationship between travel behavior and Built Environment has been context of variety of research during past decades. Many modern urban development theories such as new-urbanism and smart growth are commonly based on interactions between these two concepts. This research is aiming to analyze the effects of built environment on household trip generation, mode and destination choice as specific indices of travel behavior, based on travel diary data of Shiraz city. Multiple Linear Regression and Multinomial Logit Model concepts are used to analyze aforementioned travel behaviors in two levels. Base models predict socio-economic variables importance and expanded models are used to test... 

Improvement of public transportation systems through attention to service quality of these systems, is important in order to increase the use of these systems. Various quantitative and qualitative attributes of travel are known effective on service quality of public transportation. The investigated factors in this research, with refrence to regular bus system of the city of Tehran, are: in-vehicle time, fare, crowding and headway. For this purpose, the stated preference data of the respondents who travel to work by regular bus, collected. The survey was conducted during the last month of spring and 360 questionnaires were completed. Stated preference scenarios relating to aforementioned... 

Trip demand analysis is among the most important parts in comprehensive transportation studies. Developing four stage models including trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice, and assignment are so common in demand analyzing. In this study, trip generation models have been studied and to analyze data, two different methods including OLR and GWR are utilized. This study aims to examine relationship between aggregate zones in order to forecast future trips. Moreover, results of modeling trip generation with two different methods, OLR and GWR, are compared. Comparing different levels of aggregation reveals that as the number of zones decreases, the results get better. Decreasing number... 

One of the most important criteria in travel analysis is the vehicle kilometer traveled (VKT). The distance which personal cars, vans or other automobiles travel is measured through this criterion. In addition, the VKT is used in transportation planning, accident analysis, transportation budgets assignment, and estimation of automobile pollutions. In this work we process origin-destination data gathered in Shiraz, Iran to estimate the VKT. To this end, we incorporate the linear regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods. Through this research, data from origin-destination statistics of Shiraz, gathered by the transportation institute of Sharif University of Technology in... 

The systemic approach to innovation plays a central and somewhat unifying role within the field of innovation studies. The main tenets of the approach were developed during the last decades of twentieth century by a bunch of researchers who were tackling with the problem of the economic nature of innovation and its role in growth and competitiveness. The innovation systems approach spread out rapidly throughout the globe and established itself as a framework for studying and policy making in academia and national and supranational organizations. This vast and fast expansion, however, was accompanied by a set of critical contemplations on the theoretical soundness of the approach and also by... 

This study examines four models of the individual’s preference for home- and center-based telecommuting. Issues concerning the estimation of discrete models when the alternatives are non-exclusive are discussed. Two binary logit models are presented, one on the preference to telecommute from a center versus not telecommuting from a center, and the other on the preference to telecommute from a center over telecommuting from home. A model is also estimated on the following four alternatives: preferring not to telecommute, preferring either form of telecommuting, preferring to telecommute from home, and preferring to telecommute from a center. A comprehensive model of two distinct dimensions of... 

Possessing second place among gas reserve owner countries worldwide, Iran enjoys a very particular position in energy supply field. The crude oil is about to be replaced by natural gas in fuel sector because of growing demand for natural gas along with depletion of crude oil reserves. Some other drivers to this change are the increase in the known reserves of natural gas, the need to monetize stranded gas reserves and the environmental pressure to minimize the flaring of associated gas and carbon dioxide emissions. In such conditions the optimum consumption of these national abundant resources results in obtaining considerable revenues and strong presence of Iran in world consumption... 

In recent years, a number of studies have focused on investigating the relationship between vehicle type choice and usage. A comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing this topic can be extremely beneficial in transportation and urban studies, as well as future policymaking. In this study, the relationship between vehicle type choice and usage is investigated in the context of the city of Tehran. To provide a better understanding of the corresponding socio-economic variables, each of the decisions regarding vehicle type choice and usage in this relationship is viewed as an interrelated dimension of a single choice package rather than two independent choices. The primary data set... 

Different definitions of the term ‘subjective well-being’ have been defined by different researchers. While there is no definite definition for this concept, it can be related to one's life evaluation. The issue of citizens’ subjective well-being has not usually been considered in transportation policies, such as reducing single occupancy vehicle. However, subjective well-being reflects the individuals’ quality of life and can be one of the main priorities of any society. This study tries to find the effect of using various modes of travel including passenger car, motorcycle, public transportation and walking on citizens' subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is measured by... 

Crash severity is among the fundamental safety indicators in transportation. In recent years, distracted driving has been one of the biggest concerns in road crashes. Many scholars have evaluated the effects of distraction in crash severities and injuries. This study uses the latest general estimates system (GES) crash dataset, which is a subset of the US National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) and the structural equation model (SEM) approach to explore the relationships between distraction factors and crash severity in male and female drivers. Using SEM for modeling about 22 thousand observations offers the opportunity to simultaneously examine complex relationships between variables by... 

Today, accidents are considered as one of the main causes of human mortality in the world. According to the World Health Organization, about 1.35 million people die in accidents each year, and 20 to 50 million people are injured because of accidents. In our country, about 17000 people are killed in traffic accidents annually. The mentioned statistics clarify the significance of paying attention to traffic accidents and identifying the factors that lead to them, as well as considering the strategies and policies for reducing accident rates. Due to the fundamental role of human factors in the occurrence of car accidents, the use of models that include the personality and attitude of drivers...