ابوتراب علیرضایی

Purpose: Technology plays an essential role in any country to achieve sustainable development. Choosing appropriate and advanced technology is one of the strategic decisions of industrial managers. This research discusses the critical factors that should be considered in the process of choosing new technologies based on the competitive mechanism, and accordingly, designs and explains the technology selection model for equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage.Method: The research method is an applied one and in terms of data type, it is a partly qualitative and quantitative research. In the quantitative phase, research data was collected based on the data obtained from the qualitative phase, and using the questionnaire tool. The research data was analyzed using thematic analysis and MaxQda software in the qualitative phase and they were also  analyzed using the TOPSIS technique and meta-heuristic algorithm in the quantitative phase for modeling.Findings: Thirty-four concepts and five categories were identified as technology selection criteria for equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage. The "technical criteria" factor was identified as the foremost priority in equipping downstream petrochemical industrial units to create a competitive advantage. The ranking of the determined categories from one to five were the factors of competitive criteria, strategic criteria, internal criteria, and external criteria, respectively.Conclusion: Finally, using the TOPSIS fuzzy technique, the model of equipping industrial units was presented to help decision-makers and policy makers of downstream petrochemical industries.

Today's world has been built on the basis of competition and uncertainty, thus the role of facilitators, such as technology and information technology is undeniable. In this research developed Technology Acceptance Model to identify and prioritizing the factors affecting was used on formation of decision and behavior of customers in adoption of Internet banking of Post Bank. The statistical population consisted of all consumers of Post Bank in Tehran. Total of 400 questionnaires was distributed among community members; ultimately 384 usable questionnaires were coded and were entered into SPSS and LISREL software up to use the analysis of data. Results of factor analysis indicated proper fitting of the model and compliance of extracted factors with designed questions and explained variables in the model of the research. At the inferential statistics level also the results of using single sample T-test and ANOVA Friedman tests often were confirmed research hypotheses. Furthermore were showed the ease of application variable has the most influence on Internet banking adoption and next variables had been in order being applied, the security of private information, being pleasure existence of appropriate hardware and familiarity with Internet banking.

Despite the growth of financial technologies (FinTechs) and their impact on transforming financial services, the implementation of fintech for gaining a competitive advantage in banks appears essential. The aim of this article is to model and determine the relationships and relative importance of the dimensions and components of implementing fintech in the financial-banking system. To this end, the research was conducted with a qualitative and quantitative approach in 2023. The research community included 12 experts, comprising managers and senior specialists from state banks, who were selected purposefully and theoretically. The data collection tools were semi-structured interviews for the qualitative section and a pairwise comparison questionnaire for the quantitative section. The results of the qualitative section, analysed through content analysis, indicated that the model includes dimensions such as "infrastructure and technical", "organizational policies", "products and services", "market", "marketing and sales", "economic", "human resources" and "ecosystem." The quantitative results, analysed using fuzzy DEMATEL, showed that "products and services" is the most influential and critical dimension in the model, suggesting that the success of implementing the model depends on improving this dimension. "Ecosystem" is the most impactful dimension with the strongest relationship in implementing the model, leading to the model's improvement. The findings of the network analysis process also indicated that the components of "product and service diversity", "security and privacy protection", "product and service adaptability" and "creating a platform and sharing it" are the most important. Based on the results, it is recommended that banks invest in those financial technologies (fintech) that can quickly respond to the desires and needs of their customers for successful fintech implementation.