Undertaking Research Projects

From its inception, the Industrial Management Organization has placed research studies on its agenda at two levels:

• At the macro level that pertains to the country’s general issues and its policies and in reality, shapes the business environment of economic establishments; and
• Economic (and at times social) problems and challenges of the country’s macro and micro establishments that managers of the establishments are either directly or indirectly involved with.

it appears as though in the two 1960’s and 1970’s decades the Organization’s founders and managers judged these two approaches to be correlated to one another. In continuation, we shall discuss these two activities in detail.

The Industrial Management Organization was founded for developing the system of management of the country’s business establishments. However, its research activities necessitated that in addition to issues of management, it include economic factors and in fact, business problems of corporations among its economic research activities as well.  

Among the major fields that the Organization has dealt with so far and that falls within the framework of Strategic Management and Planning, one can name “analyses of eco-social and politico-environmental problems of the corporation”  which has been carried out for a large number of the country’s big corporations. In certain instances, these studies in keeping with the employer’s needs, have assumed the form of comparative studies as well.

With regard to these experiences, the most important micro economy studies of Industrial Management Organization can be enumerated as below:

• Market research of goods and services of economic establishments;
• Analyses of internal economic issues and problems of economic establishments;
• Studies about the business environment of establishments;
• Issues of competition and competitiveness of an establishment in local market;
• Issues and problems of industrial investment;
• Labor issues and problems;
• Analyses of export of goods and services opportunities of economic establishments;
• Analyses of issues of the establishment’s costs;
• Cost reduction;    

The Industrial Management Organization’s several years of experience has shown that even though analyses of management problems and difficulties is of critical importance in the country’s business environment and economic management, however, it cannot be enough because environmental variables and crises can have a profound effect on the operations of the establishment as well as on its management decisions. For this reason, on the basis of its national mission and also in order to help solve the management problems and issues of the country’s economic establishments the Industrial Management Organization always devotes a percentage of its manpower and resources to economic studies and analyses of the business environment.  In this way, in addition to the economic problems and activities of manufacturing establishments (including services, industrial and agricultural), their economic environment (and at times social and political) too has been placed within the scope of studies of the Organization’s experts.

In addition to establishments, this organization has registered in its report card studies of the environment of socio-economic activities of a number of ministries such as Ministry of Health, Medicine and Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Industries as well. This field of studies has also paved the way for the Organization’s entry into the sphere of policy-making at the national level.

In this way, the most important spheres of macroeconomic studies activity of the Organization’s can be enumerated as:

• Understanding the country’s business environment;
• Problems and difficulties of industrial investment in the country;
• Export and import of goods in addition to the problems of smuggling of goods and its impact on manufacturing;
• Studies related to membership in international organizations – especially the World Trade Organization (WTO)
• Labor law and social and economic problems related to it;
• Evaluation of the government’s foreign currency policies and their impact on production and competitiveness of national productions;
• Analyzing government policy with regard to any particular industry especially those that are big and monopolistic;
• Evaluating and commenting on the government’s macro policies and the general policies of the State Exigency Council;
• Studies concerning privatization policy of the country’s economic institutions;
• Study of target foreign markets for Iran’s industrial, services and agriculture production);
• Analyzing problems of small and medium enterprises (SME) at the macro national level.