Sharif Digital Repository

Systems Thinking is a key to improve the quality of decision making in various situations such as social, political, economic and managerial ones. Systems Thinking is considered a foundation of Organizational Learning and currently has a crucial and cultivating role in the management literature. Therefore, it is now critical for organizations to have people within them who are able to think systematically. This need for possessing Systems Thinkers in organizations highlights the importance of the education of Systems Thinking. An evidence for this is the growing importance of Systems Thinking Education in the Systems Thinking Literature. On the other hand, one of the most important issues in... 

Consumers Communicate with each other to share information and feelings about products and brands. One important area to study personal influence in contemporary environment is online personal influence or electronic word of mouth. This study develops and tests consumers' motivations to participate in eWoM communication in online discussion forums. The main reason to choose Online forums is the huge number of eWoM discussions which occur in them. The main goal of this study is developing an aggregate framework for consumers' motives for opinion giving and seeking in online forums.To accomplish this goal we studied a comprehensive literature review, identified all motivations for WoM and... 

There are mainly two major issues in contemporary epistemology: knowledge and justification. Many necessary and sufficient conditions have been suggested in order to define “knowledge”. Knowledge often has been defined as “justified true belief”. But Gettier by some counter examples showed that these conditions are not sufficient for knowledge’s analysis. Many different answers are offered to solve Gettier’s problems. Theories about justification can be divided into two classes: internalist and externalist. Virtue epistemology is a new approach in epistemology that focus on epistemic and moral virtues. It seems that Linda Zagzebski is one of the best theorists in this approach. In this... 

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has recently received great attention in the area of second language learning. Thus, the concept of willingness to communicate and what would influence the students' willingness to communicate gain importance. The current study employed a hybrid design to probe Iranian students' willingness to communicate. First, self-report questionnaires were administered to 431 language learners to collect quantitative data. Then, interviews were conducted with 41 randomly selected learners who had already completed the questionnaires. Pearson correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA, independent t-test through SPSS .16 and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) analyses... 

Self-regulated learning, though having swept educational psychology's literature like a tidal wave (Boekaerts, 1999), and also, compared to other constructs such as metacognition and learning strategies, has remained comparatively uncharted in L2 research. One preliminary step to chart this concept is to develop questionnaires for it. With these and other things in mind, the principal purpose of this study was to develop a questionnaire in English and Persian to measure self-regulated language learning capacity and behavior of Iranian EFL learners. The development of the questionnaire was guided by two pilots (412 participants), content validation through expert judgment, cognitive... 

Developing ESP knowledge of a specific academic discipline is not only a privilege but a prerequisite for successful performance in related academic and occupational settings. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses at undergraduate level in Iranian universities are designed to serve this purpose. Needs analysis is the foremost step to design relevant and useful ESP courses, but how to approach needs in a motivating and interesting way is still a question pending further research. Accordingly, focusing on engineering fields in three Iranian state universities, this study aimed at identifying factors that affect engineering students’ motivation for learning technical English in ESP... 

With the rise of the sharing economy, customers’ motivations to participate has become a controversial phenomenon. The sharing economy has different industries that might itself be a reason for the emergence of different incentives in customers. Moreover, these industries can affect motivation by controlling various touchpoints Two dimensions, quantity and quality illustrate the impact of touchpoints The encounter of touchpoints with both of the provider and consumer side might confuse companies to choose the best composition of has been conducted to identify the importance of motives to use different industries of the sharing economy and examine the impact of the brands’ touchpoints . In... 

It has been reported that in some organizations despite delegation according to its concept, some of the organization members don’t have an internal motivation to use the autonomy that has been delegated to them. This problem might have different aspects. From the self-determination theory perspective, this might be because of unsatisfied basic needs of the person. For example, if all options the person has, are desirable or all of the options are undesirable and the person can’t choose between them. This might result in unsatisfied basic needs of the person. Due to these conditions, there is a probability that she won’t have an internal motivation to use autonomy. In some researches, it has...