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This study aims to investigate the probable future scenarios of nanotechnology development and their implications in Iran considering anticipatory knowledge, suitable methodology and integral perspective.

The study used framework morphology, a method for creating scenarios and their implications developed by the Delphi method that covers the consistent morphological space and make contact with previous scenario work, as well as the current and projected research and policy situation in Iran.

The study identified five scenarios, namely, “no nano” scenario headlines picturing a future society that there is no impact of nanotechnology in it. The “nano flow” scenario and indicates prospering nanotechnology in the full sides of the market. The “no nano contact” scenario suspecting that apart from the already banned nanotechnological applications in food, cosmetics, clothes and agricultural applications might bear equally unacceptable risks. The “hidden nano” scenario by pointing out the effects of accidents and crimes traced back to intended or unintended misuse of nanotechnological applications. Then finally, the “red nano” scenario illustration headlines the prospects of medical, energy system efficiency and nanotechnological applications in information and communication technologies.

The policymakers could use the scenarios and their implications as part of its considerations in strategic planning.

This paper represents the first time that a framework for societal implications has been applied to nanotechnology development topic in Iran.

Higher education and universities have faced unprecedented and ubiquitous changes. The University of Tehran or “UT,” as the leading university in Iran, is not immune to these changes. The purposes of this study is to investigate the current situation and future of the UT and gain insights and possible responses to changes that suit its strengths and potential to progress in an increasingly competitive, complex environment with uncertainties. It identifies deep fundamental underpinnings of the issue and highlights them for policymakers to formulate strategies and future vision of the UT.

Causal layered analysis (CLA) was applied as a framework and the data collected from different sources such as literature reviews, content analysis of rules, regulations and master plans of the university and coded interviews of four different groups of university stakeholders were analyzed. The current system of UT, as well as hidden beliefs, that maintains traditional perceptions about university was mapped. Next, by applying a new recursive process and reverse CLA order, new CLA layers extracted through an expert panel, the layers of CLA based on new metaphors to envision future of UT were backcasted.

The results from CLA layers including litany, system, worldview and metaphor about the current statue of UT show disinterest and inertia against changes, conservative, behind the times and traditional perceptions, and indicate that the UT system is mismatched to the needs of society and stakeholders in the future. The authors articulated alternative perspectives deconstructed from other worldviews so there are new narratives that reframe the issues at hand. The results show that to survive in this fast-paced revolution and competition in higher education, UT should develop scenarios and formulate new strategies.

The authors had limited access to a wide range of stakeholders. As the UT is a very big university with so many faculties and departments, to access a pool of experts and top policymakers who were so busy and did not have time to interview inside and outside of university was very hard for the research team. The authors also had limitation to access the internal enactments and decisions of the trustee board of the UT and the financial balance sheets of the university.

In this paper, by mixing different methods of futures studies, the authors have shown how to move forward while understanding the perspectives of stakeholders about the future of UT by a new recursive process and reverse CLA order. A supplementary phase was added to improve CLA and to validate the method and results, which were ignored in previous studies.

Within a religious tourism destination, the study of business networks can be used to improve understanding of the interactions taking place within or among businesses, by exploring the informal and formal connections linking them together. Hence, the purpose of this study is to map and analyze strategic business networks operating in a religious destination.

This research explores the networks of stakeholders associated with a religious context in an intensive single case study on Al-Atabat Al-Aliyat in Iraq through qualitative analysis. Multiple methods of data collection were used to build strategic networks promoting religious tourism in the Middle-East region. Key analysis practices include content analysis and social network analysis (SNA). The identified interrelationships between stakeholders were analyzed by using UCINet, an SNA tool.

The study reveals three different types of cooperation networks in the case of Al-Atabat Al-Aliyat, namely, a 67-actor continuous network, a 69-actor non-Arbaeen network and an 89-actor Arbaeen network. The results also pinpoint the need for more collaborative activities on the different levels of cooperation in the networks.

This paper provides important guidelines on how to manage the interrelationships within tourism networks in a religious destination such as Iraq. The findings highlight the acute need for establishing strategic and effective networks of stakeholders in Al-Atabat Al-Aliyat. Non-tangible, long-term and quantitative benefits can be found for tourism businesses investing time and money in religious networks in Iraq.

The research contributes to religious tourism literature, filling the gaps about how the interrelationships among the actors involved in a business network can evolve over time and influence the success of a certain religious destination.

This study aims to introduce the model of implementation to run the smart production factories. The study also aims to investigate the Industry 4.0 technologies as enablers to deal with challenges in the way of implementation.

This contribution benefits from two teams of experts to evaluate the challenges and technologies of Industry 4.0. The Hanlon method is applied to evaluate, rank and prioritise the challenges which are initially scored by experts’ Team 1. Then, the adjacency matrix among enablers and challenges is extracted through the opinions of experts’ Team 2. The study also uses fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) to evaluate the real weights of technologies and challenges, rank and prioritise subsequently.

A total of 8 challenging obstacles and 24 key technologies have been evaluated. The findings reveals that recruit and retention of experienced managers, undefined return on investment and recruit and retention of multi-skilled workers are the most serious challenges in the way of implementing smart production factories. Furthermore, big data, IT-based management and Internet of Things are the top-ranked key enablers to face the challenges.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the pioneering studies that uses Hanlon method to evaluate industrial challenges. Integrating Hanlon method and FCM leads to a comprehensive model of evaluation and ranking which is another novelty of this contribution. Although many research studies have been released to implement the smart factories, practical model of implementation for production factories is identified as a literature gap.

Industrial tourists can contribute to the local sites income. Apart from large and well-known industrial units, small industrial units can also introduce their products to the market by organizing tourism tours. This study aims to analyze an industrial tourism business network established in Isfahan, a large, industrial and historic city in central of Iran, as a case study.

Participants were managers and experts of organizations operated in the Industrial Tourism Network in Isfahan city. A sample of 30 participates was selected through purposive and snowball sampling approaches. Data was analyzed by qualitative content analysis and social network analysis using UCINET software.

Twenty-eight organizations participated in the Industrial Tourism Business Network of Isfahan. Macro indices of the network revealed that: density is relatively low; most of the relationships among network member organizations are reciprocal; transitivity is relatively weak indicating low network stability against environmental player; clustering is low, indicating a relatively low tendency of members to form different clusters. Micro indices indicated that in-degree and out-degree centralizations are low; overall centralization is poor. In addition, six actors were in the center and 22 actors were in the peripheral. Finally, the number of interactions of central organizations was triple than the peripheral organizations.

Limitations of this study include: The data obtained in this study only reflected the relationships among the actors studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on actors engaged in an industrial tourism network. Therefore, the sample might involve some bias. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of the role of networking in tourism destinations, particularly industrial sites.

According to the results, the authors may be able to advise firms operating in the tourism industry, particularly actors operate in industrial tourism, regarding how to increase their collaboration with both internal and external environment to achieve better performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that has addressed an industrial tourism business network.

Religious tourism is a form of tourism where people of a particular faith travel to visit places of religious significance in their faith. Previous research into the various aspects of religious and spiritual tourism (RST) has been noticeably extended. The purpose of this study is to perform systematic mapping to provide trends and classification regarding the recent publications in the area of RST.

This study collected 181 papers from five scientific databases, from which 122 were selected to be classified according to six properties: research type, research focus, research method, investigated religion, publication type and time.

The analysis of these data resulted in a map of the research field, which was presented under three perspectives: the distribution and trends over time of each classification property and the relationship between them. Besides the visual map, the full list of classified papers is available. The results showed that the number of publications is increasing every year, which shows a growing interest in this field. Moreover, the primary research focuses were destination, demand and marketing. Top three journals were found to be International Journal of Tourism Research, Tourism Recreation Research and Journal of Heritage Tourism. Furthermore, evaluation research, solution proposals and opinion papers were the main research types in the area. In addition, the majority of studies focused on Christianity and Islam. Finally, survey, discussion paper, interview and case study were the predominantly used research methods.

The mapping study delivers the first systematic summary of RST research.

Catch-up is a process during which the countries that are behind the technological borders try to reduce their technological gaps. For a company or country in the catch-up process, a suitable level of technological capabilities and absorption capacity is necessary as a fixed advance requirement. This paper aims to develop a catch-up model of technology.

This study reviewed 90 published articles in the field of business management in Q1 and Q2 journals from the very beginning to the year of 2018 so that a framework can be presented for a catch-up. This framework has been obtained according to the process of grounded theory and by combining the previous studies.

Accordingly, a framework of six categories has been presented including causal factors, main category, background factors, intervening factors, strategies and consequences. Finally, three general approaches including independence, collaboration and cooperation, are introduced and each of these categories has been described in a spectrum of this approach.

This is the first study to conceptualize a catch-up model of technology by grounded theory.

A great number of people use mobile social networks (MSNs) to communicate, entertain, learn, search and get advice. Growth and survival of any community depends on the activities of its members in sharing information and knowledge. The purpose of this study is to assess the influential factors on knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs in different perspectives in a comprehensive manner.

A model of factors affecting knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs is proposed by applying the structural equation modeling and path analysis to data collected from a sample of users of a well-known MSN through a questionnaire.

This study supports the contributive aspects of trust and enjoying participation in sharing knowledge, while there is no significant correlation between perceived ease of use and knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs. Furthermore, intention to share knowledge can lead to actual behavior in MSNs environments.

The results obtained here provide a grasp of factors that influence knowledge sharing in mobile communities which would promote enhanced contribution towards their online communities by MSNs administrators.

A four-dimensional comprehensive model consisting of social, psychological, cultural and technological perspectives in one package is proposed here for knowledge sharing behavior in MSNs. Such a comprehensive perspective is overlooked in the existing literature.

This study aims at characterizing and identifying the existing research on tourism business networks.

The authors conducted a systematic mapping study to identify and analyze related literature. They identified 225 primary studies, dated from 1997-2016, and classified them with respect to research focus, types of research and contribution.

Seventy four studies were identified and mapped, synthesizing the available evidence on tourism business networks. “Business networks” with 27 articles is the dominant research focus and “Network configuration” with 22 articles is the next dominant one. Regarding the research type, “Solution proposal” is the most frequently used research type. “Interview” and “Case study”, respectively, were the most used research methods. However, “Agent-based modeling”, “Delphi study” and “Non-linear time series analysis” were used less often. “Philosophical paper” was the most common research type between 1997 and 2002, and after that “Solution proposal” was the dominant research paper type. Further, the number of publications has declined between 2012 and 2014.

This mapping study provides the first systematic exploration of the state-of-art on tourism business networks research. The existing body of knowledge is limited to a few high quality studies.