فصلنامه توسعه کارآفرینی
سال پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 18، زمستان 1391)

Islam has directly addressed the issue of business and considered it as one of the most significant issues in life. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between religiosity and Iranian entrepreneurs’ achievements using the multi-component religiosity scale proposed by Khodayaryfard, et al. as well as the standards set for measuring the Iranian top entrepreneurs’ achievement by the Ministry of Cooperative, Labor and Social Welfare. The results of this descriptive study in which Pearson Test Spearmen formula and ANOVA Test were utilized to analyze the data collected from 114 subjects revealed that there was no significant relationship between religiosity and entrepreneurs’ achievements. However, the total score for religiosity and the score for each single component (beliefs, affection and behaviors) indicated a high level of religiosity which was also in conformity with the results obtained by Khodayaryfard, et al. in their research project on measuring levels of religiosity.

Entrepreneurship has been known as a method of identifying new opportunities, allocating resources in the situation of uncertainty and creating an organization to manage resources. This paper describes religious learning approaches in which entrepreneurship is beneficial to society and individuals through its economic advantages. The benefits are gained through innovation, productivity and new business opportunities promoted by the Islamic society. Hence, the Islamic economy widely recognizes and encourages the entrepreneurial businesses with a positive-sum game while non-entrepreneurial businesses with a zero-sum or negative-sum game are simultaneously rejected. Gambling, Gharar and Rehan are examples of such non-entrepreneurial and zero-sum businesses a indeed. Based on the findings of this study, the Islamic economy strongly encourages people towards economic activities that are entrepreneurial businesses and comprise positive-sum game. However, it discourages non-entrepreneurial activities which include uncertainty with zero-sum consequences and even uncertainty with a positive-sum game is somehow accepted.

An important and fundamental issue in Islamic discussions is ethics as one of the most challenging topics in management. More importantly, some recent researches in the field of entrepreneurship have explored the area of ethics in entrepreneurship. These studies are generally divided into three categories of "ethical entrepreneurship", "entrepreneurial ethics", and "influence of ethics on entrepreneurship". The third category that has received less attention is the effect of moral values on entrepreneur's abilities. As since the research done so far in this field is scarce and there is little evidence for the Islamic moral components, attempt is made to identify the most important moral components that Islam has emphasized in entrepreneurship and then measure their correlation with entrepreneurial personality characteristics. Thus two questionnaires containing 23 questions for measuring entrepreneurial characteristics and 30 questions for measuring moral components were used. The statistical community of this study was the students of the higher education centers in the Province of Qom with over forty thousand people and a sample of 137 persons was selected. The results of data analysis showed that some entrepreneurial characteristics such as internal controls, need to succeed, and tolerance of failure have a meaningful relationship with many of the moral components such as efforts, opportunities, and responsibility. Finally, an adaptive conceptual model covering the entrepreneurial personality characteristics and Islamic moral components was obtained.

In this paper, first, the concept of value-based and religious entrepreneurship and also entrepreneurial behavior from Islamic viewpoint have been studied. The most important factor affecting this behavior from Islam perspective is "Shakeleh" (Manner) in the Holly Quran (Surah Al-Isra, 85): Say, Each work according to his Shakeleh (Manner), but your Lord is most knowing of who is best guided in this way). Second, the role of Shakeleh (Manner) in the entrepreneurial behavior has been investigated and a new Shakeleh-based behavioral model has been presented. The method of qualitative content analysis has been applied to explain the behavior based on religious data. The results show that a change in Shakeleh leads to a permanent change in entrepreneurial behavior. Accordingly any change in Shakeleh depends on the change in the minds and spirit which also depends on the religious faith.

Religion plays a leading role in community, and has been cited as an important factor in people's lives, especially in the Islamic countries. The purpose of this paper was to identify the relationship between religious believe and entrepreneurial intention of the University of Tehran students. The population consisted of M.Sc. students at the Faculty of Entrepreneurship and College of Agricultural and Natural Resources. A sample of 120 students was selected using random sampling method. Data were collected through a questionnaire. The validity of questionnaire was determined through the opinions expressed by the faculty members of the University of Tehran. Cronbach’s-alpha formula was used to calculate the reliability, and it was found to be acceptable (alpha > 0.65). The results revealed that there were positive significant relationships between entrepreneurial intention and religious impacts. Also, the results showed that there were significant differences at 0.01 level (2-tailed) between course and religious knowledge and practices and also between religious impacts and commitment at 0.05 level (1-tailed). Based on the findings and conclusions of this study, specific recommendations were presented.

Considering the importance of marketing and entrepreneurship from the Islamic perspective and academic literature and the significance of entrepreneurs, religious beliefs in applying marketing concepts, the aim of this study is to identify and verify entrepreneurial marketing mix from the viewpoint of the top entrepreneurs` Islamic-religious in small and medium sized enterprises. In order to achieve this purpose, the mixed exploratory method is selected as the research approach. Samples at the qualitative stage are 10 top entrepreneurs who were selected by the Ministry of Cooperative, Labor and Social Welfare in 2009-2010. Quantitatively the samples were 44 top entrepreneurs in the 4 recent years. The data collection tools were interviews and questionnaire for the qualitative and quantitative stages respectively. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis method, and for quantitative data the descriptive and inferential statistics indicators such as One Sample T-Test, Simultaneous Regression and Friedman were employed. The results of this study showed that entrepreneurial marketing mix based on the Islamic-religious orientation consisted of seven elements which were ranked as follows: production, pricing, distribution, promotion, customers handling, competition, and products sales.

Religious entrepreneurship falls within the category of the social entrepreneurship which attempts to put the societal values derived from religious beliefs - into entrepreneurial perspective. Because of the environmental changes and more complex organizational decisions, the necessity of using strategic planning in such organizations is now more obvious. the differences between social and religious organizations with business entities will make it hard to use strategic frameworks designed for profit. This paper presents "Pedaran Asemani" as a case of religious entrepreneurial organization and surveys the strategic planning process by using Bryson's model. This qualitative research applies data triangulation by utilizing the three data gathering methods (in-depth interviews, observation and document review) in order to increase its reliability. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the data and the results show that all of the ten steps of Bryson's strategic planning model except making the vision statement are implemented and some elements are also added to this model. These results may encourage the implementation of strategic planning process in religious entrepreneurial organizations.

Lending agricultural credits should follow a theoretical background. This research primarily investigated five theoretical patterns especially the Islamic pattern about distribution of productive credits. Then it examined the reliability of the patterns by accomplishing a case study about agricultural credits. The research was based on grounded theory approach. Data were collected through observation and semi structured reviews. Results of the study revealed that many factors affected productive use of agricultural loans and social class of farmers was not an effective factor in contrast to capitalist system. The findings showed that the Islamic pattern has considered these effective factors in the framework of general guidelines including prevention of capitalists’ monopoly, consideration for small projects and poor people for loans and lending credits in respect of the competencies and capabilities of farmers. The Islamic instructions have considered resources as extravagance if not granted to the right purpose and have forbidden it. Thus in contrast to basic needs pattern, Islam believes that mere increase in the availability of productive loan in rural areas is an unrealistic effort and it would not lead to lucrative jobs and economic justice.

Nowadays entrepreneurship is known as the engine of growth and development in societies and organizations Indeed, the process of establishing a career is based on an innovative idea. In this paper, we have sought to review the concept and the importance of entrepreneurship in the current world economic situation. Additionally, we discuss the role of religions in entrepreneurship and (with emphasis on Islam, as the perfect divine religion) in creating employment, generating wealth and improving economic conditions in societies. Considering that the main concern of the Islamic system (like any other economic system) is to curb unemployment and consequently increase the per capita production and thereby improve the economic growth, social welfare and social justice, the basic question in this study is to address the factors of production and production methods which could lead to development of a dynamic and stable business environment in the Islamic society.