فصلنامه توسعه کارآفرینی
سال چهارم شماره 3 (پیاپی 13، پاییز 1390)

Social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurial processes essentiality provide an opportunity to create social values in an innovative manner. Regarding the critical role of this emerging phenomenon in sustainable social and economic development, scholars emphasize the need for developing the social entrepreneurial venture (SEV) in societies. The contextual nature of social entrepreneurship makes it necessary to understand its particular processes and mechanisms in a specific social, economic and cultural context where it is supposed to be developed. Thus, this study has addressed the question of “how is the process of a new SEV undertaken in a developing country like Iran?” In doing so, the grounded theory method was used. Nine in-depth interviews were conducted as case studies of social entrepreneurs who had experienced the process of the SEV creation. Through data collection and analysis stage, structure of values and social interactions of social entrepreneurs from childhood to the time of their social venture creation were documented in detail. Interaction between social entrepreneurs and their context was deemed to be a fundamental level of analysis. Based on this analysis, a middle range theory was drawn. According to the findings, the main theme that leads to creation of social entrepreneurial venture is the individual`s attitude toward socially responsible activities, signifyting the perceived desirability of the venture. With the influence of specific mediators and contextual factors, the individual perceives the feasibility of social entrepreneurial venture and adopts specific strategies that will lead to new social entrepreneurial venture.

New ventures play a key role in developing innovation, employment, and increasing the competitive advantages in the country. However, the failure rate of these ventures is dramatically high; consequently, it triggers lots of economic, social, psycho-mental, and physical costs for entrepreneurs and many other societied sectors, as well. Thus, identifying the causes of these failures is of great importance. The causes of most businesses, failures are almost the same identifiable factors. In this qualitative study, we use a narrative approach by using in-depth interviews to scrutinize the career of 10 habitual entrepreneurs, who had experienced various failures. As a result, we have identified their failure causes in seven different categories as follows: lack of knowledge, experience, and entrepreneurial skills; marketing and sales challenges; partnership problems; inflexibility; financial problems; narcissism and path dependence; and finally inappropriate business environment. The most essential finding of this study is the prominent role of partnership problems and low flexibility in entrepreneurial failures.

This paper studies the most important financial needs of entrepreneurs in various stages of a company development. Stages of a company development in this paper are divided into four phases: 1- prestart-up phase 2-start- up phase 3- operational phase and 4- growth phase. Then we survey the financial needs at every stage. Its statistical population includes entrepreneurs belonging to the food industry and chemical industry in Qom Province. The tool to collect data was a questionnaire and SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Based on the results, the cost of research and development and market research, the cost of plant and equipment and the cost of liquidity for the first three stages respectively will constitute the most important financial needs of entrepreneurs. In the fourth step, the cost of human resource and finance in food industry, and the cost of new distribution channels in chemical industry will constitute the most important financial needs of entrepreneurs.

In the present-day society, entrepreneurship has an undeniable impact on economic, social and technological developments. The purpose of this research is to investigate and identify the variables and also explain some factors influencing independent entrepreneurial processes in Bandar Anzali. The research statistical population is 145 independent entrepreneurial out of which a sampling of 100 entrepreneurs are defined on the basis of Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring (GEM). By collecting data and using standard components, the hypotheses were tested based on non-experimental research and reliability coefficient of 79% by Cronbach Alpha. According to the research, four variables in a Path Analysis Regression model, clarified the factors affecting independent entrepreneurial process in this community. These variables would affect the independent entrepreneurial process, both directly (all variables), indirectly and interactively (other than the individual variables). Individual variables (0.91), job (0.57), behavior (0.39) and environment (0.24) respectively have the most direct impact on independent entrepreneurial process.

Cold Chain Management (CCM) is referred to a system which handles process and activities related to the perishable products in Supply Chain (SC). In this paper, the role of individual and organizational entrepreneurship in promoting performance level of Cold Chain (CC) has been addressed. The current research has been done in a descriptive procedure, and multiple regressions have been used to investigate the relationship between research variables. To find out the impact of entrepreneurship on improvement of planning, quality and export process, three hypotheses were presented. To examine the hypotheses based on Likert Spectrum, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among specialists and managers of four reputable dairy companies. The result of the questionnaires obtained by SPSS software approved all the hypotheses. Moreover, resource finding, planning, reliability and improving export processes showed more important effect on the research variables. At the end of the paper, the results of the research and future research suggestions were presented.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between insurance occupational training on the one hand and entrepreneurial skills (personal, managerial and technical) on the other hand. The study also aimed to represent practical solutions to reinforce the occupational training of insurance companie's employees. This applied study used a descriptive survey method. The research population included all the 1600 employees of insurance companies in Isfahan in 2009. The sample size of this study was estimated at 301 persons through Cochran's formula and was chosen through Stratified random sampling. A researcher-made questionnaire with Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.84 was used to collect data. To test the research hypotheses, T-test for independent samples, T-test for paired samples and Kruskall-Wallis tests were used. The results showed that entrepreneurial skills of the insurance companies’ employees were different in terms of academic education and the beginning or in-service trainings. Also, the employee's personal and managerial skills in entrepreneurship were different based on the kind of their activity. However, no significant difference was observed among the employees’ technical entrepreneurial skills based on the kind of activity. Finally, it was revealed that no significant difference existed between the performance of trained employees whose majors were insurance management and employees whose majors were different in terms of entrepreneurial skills. The findings from this study indicate clear reasons for the importance of insurance employees’ occupational training in entrepreneurial skills.

In this paper, the relationship between entrepreneurial success and personality characters was examined. The characters included: creativity, need for achievement, locus of control, risk taking and tolerance of ambiguity. Another important goal was to study the effect of technical training on the entrepreneurial success. In this research, the characters were measured by using Kordenaeij questionnaire while entrepreneurial success was measured by using a questionnaire including 10 questions. We tested a sample of 236 entrepreneurs in small and medium, sized enterprises (SMEs) in metal industries in Khorasan Razavi Province and for data analysis we used SPSS16 software package. A relationship was found between entrepreneurial success and personality characters, and, there were not any significant differences between male and female entrepreneurs, characters except the creativity. Implications, limitations, and suggestions were discussed.

Business incubators are recognized as important tools for promoting entrepreneurship development and wealth creation through supporting small and medium knowledge-based enterprises. This study aims at developing a framework for evaluating the incubators’ performance on four major dimensions, namely infrastructure, management and staff practices, business services, and outputs. To test the proposed model by using a correlational research method as a quantitative research, an author-made questionnaire (with reliability coefficient of 0.9343) surveyed opinions of 101 respondents from 7 incubators selected from all active technology incubators in Iran. SEM tests confirmed overall goodness of fit of the model and hypotheses tests showed significant differences in the range of incubators, performance. It is suggested that benchmarking, networking with universities, public and private institutions, and a holistic approach to incubation may improve incubators’ performance.

Today's modern economy is based more on intangibles_information, innovation, and creativity_as well as their abilities to facilitate expanding potential towards exploitation of ideas and creation of the new products and services. The importance of innovation and new ideas in gaining and sustaining competitive advantages characterize a necessity for creation of idea bank in telecommunication industry. Hence, the aim of the current qualitative research is to identify the factors affecting the creation of idea virtual bank for the telecommunication industry in Khorasan Rezavi Province. Required information was gathered through in-depth interviews and focus group techniques with telecommunication experts and informants (n=30). The findings of analysis based on the subjective categorized codes include: milieu and content, cognitive factors, technology effect, maintaining, preserving, tools for creating and offering idea, open and closed innovation, earning method, market techniques, commercializing, assessing, encouraging and supporting method. Based on the systemic conceptualization, the mentioned constructs and factors were integrated to design and formulate the system of "idea virtual bank" in telecommunication industry. Formal records of ideas in organizations to protect intellectual property and the use of software to stimulate creativity and development of ideas are suggested in this research.

The purpose of this research is content analysis and evaluation of scientific production of entrepreneurship with thematic approach and methodology. The research covers 92 articles published in the Journal of Entrepreneurship Development in the period 1387-1390.The findings from content analysis of this Journal suggest that the dominant themes in research are corporate entrepreneurship and business creation and development. Most studies are focused on the data sources. Interviews and observation research tools have been infrequently used. Quantitative aspect is the dominant method of analysis in entrepreneurship research while the qualitative and mixed method being consistent with the dynamic and complex nature of entrepreneurship is not often used. Studies are mainly cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have not received great attention. Furthermore, the statistical analysis techniques become more complex over time and the use of structural equation modeling is growing. The dominant analysis level is the individual and organization. Most studies are focused on a single analysis level and incorporate entrepreneurs, business founders and managers of governmental and non-governmental organizations.