رویا سلطانی

Objective : In the competitive global retail industry, achieving sustainable competitive advantage is a key factor for long-term success. This advantage arises when companies effectively utilize their unique resources and capabilities to outperform competitors. Operational efficiency and financial performance are critical for evaluating competitiveness and investment attractiveness. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a standard method for measuring efficiency, but classical DEA cannot fully rank efficient units. Integrating DEA with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods addresses this limitation, considering investor-relevant financial ratios. This study proposes a two-stage approach to evaluate and rank retail companies comprehensively.  Methodology: In the first stage, an input-oriented CCR model of DEA is applied, with assets, operating expenses, and the number of employees as inputs, and total revenue and net profit as outputs, to assess relative efficiency. In the second stage, financial indicators—asset turnover, dividend yield, return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), and return on investment (ROI)—alongside DEA efficiency scores are evaluated using the PROMETHEE II method to generate a complete preference-based ranking of retailers. Results : DEA in the first stage provides relative efficiency insights but cannot rank efficient units. Employing PROMETHEE II in the second stage, and considering financial ratios, overcomes this limitation and produces a comprehensive ranking. Validation against DEA, hybrid DEA–PROMETHEE II, and hybrid DEA–AHP rankings demonstrates a strong alignment of the results with the actual market positions of retailers. Conclusion : The proposed method enables investors to identify high-performing companies and provides retailers with a strategic tool to monitor competitiveness, identify strengths and weaknesses, optimize resource allocation, and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Improving the competitiveness of businesses through investment in industrial parks is one of the challenges that managers face for economic development. This study has been done with the aim of identifying, determining relationships and providing a structural model of investment to competitive advantage in industrial parks. The data have been analyzed in two parts, qualitative and quantitative. In the qualitative part, the variables of the model were extracted using the method of content analysis and coding and confirmed by the fuzzy Delphi method, and in the quantitative part, the hierarchical structure model was presented. The statistical population of the research is 25 experts who were selected by non-probability purposeful and snowball sampling and answered the pairwise comparison questionnaire. The findings of the qualitative section showed that the model has eight variables including "infrastructure investment", "motivational investment", "economical investment", "institutional investment", "environmental investment", "support investment", "Political investment" and "competitiveness". The findings of the quantitative section showed that the structural model has six levels, that "political investment" and "infrastructure investment" have the most influence in the model and are in the first priority. We conclude that in order to competitive advantage, managers should pay more attention to technical and informational infrastructure, as well as appropriate policies and providing regulations.

The most important policymaker entity in the bank-centered economy of Iran is central bank of Islamic Republic of Iran which has always been trying to manage and improve macroeconomic indicators by applying monetary policies. However, investigation of Iran's economy after four decades shows that this country has always suffered from double-digit inflation rates and 15000-fold liquidity throughout this period, while GDP of Iran has grown only by two times during this period. This paper tries to evaluate the effect of monetary policies of central bank on macroeconomic indicators by analytical-descriptive and library method via combining system dynamics and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making using Vensim and Super Decision software. Monetary policy instruments in this re-search include foreign exchange rate, deposits interest rate, facilities interest rate, required reserve ratio, and open market operations. Further, the macroeconomic indicators include inflation, liquidity, national foreign exchange value, and eco-nomic growth. The results indicated that the most important macroeconomic indi-cators in the country according to economic experts are "national foreign ex-change value" and "inflation". The most important tool for monetary policies of central bank is "foreign exchange rate". Indeed, in order to improve the economic misery index, this bank should take measures to improve the national foreign exchange value, then manage inflation and liquidity, and eventually adjust the banking interest rate