فصلنامه توسعه کارآفرینی
پیاپی 2 (زمستان 1387)

Corporate Entrepreneurship is a major branch of entrepreneurship that plays a key role towards excellence in most organizations. On the other hand, Insurance industry as a vital infrastructure meets a considerable deficiency in accomplishing its mission in Iran, and it seems that developing entrepreneurship components in different processes of this industry and also developing entrepreneurial culture among its personnel can be a superior solution for this problem. Accordingly, this study measures the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship orientation and performance of a sample selected from among the personnel of corporate agencies of Iran Insurance Company in Tehran. In this research, "flexible structure", "effective organizational climate", "supporting and motivating culture to creativity and innovation" and "employee's individual competencies and motivation" are dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship, and "employee's satisfaction", "customer's satisfaction" and "financial performance" are dimensions of agencies performance through which their reciprocal relationships are measured. Results of correlation analysis on sample research composed of agencies personnel, totally demonstrates that corporate entrepreneurship orientation has a positive and significant correlation with performance of agencies. In conclusion, Implications regarding entrepreneurship concept for managerial practice in insurance industry, other comparable industries, and also future research programs are provided.

This paper addresses the issue of the relationship between the type of organizational / economic structure and organizational entrepreneurship in small- and- medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). It further provides discussions on mechanical/organic structures as well as organizational entrepreneurship and knowledge structure. In another section, the methodology of the research includes hypotheses, research method, target population and case studies on which this study is based. The research method is a field study and the means for data collection is questionnaire. Our population includes 105 SMEs in Shokuhieh Town (Qom Province) with 70 firms. The applied statistical technique is Spearman's correlation coefficient and Freedman's ranking test.Data analysis is performed by SPSS software. The findings show that there is a significant relationship between the type of organizational/economic structure and organizational entrepreneurship in SMEs.

Entrepreneurship, as a general concept, has a history since time immemorial. However, theoretically this concept has recently been explored as an academic disipline whereby various research programs have been conducted on the positioning of entrepreneurship education and effectiveness of the study materials. So far some models have been presented by researchers, but far from reaching a global consensus in this field. Still, challenging investigations are moving in a direction to reach adaptability.This paper first starts with the historical background of entrepreneurship and then introduces some guidelines for promotion and extension of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. Additionally the objectives of entrepreneurship education are discussed along with a model which is employed to assess the effectiveness of entrepreneurial instruction. Lastly, a case study is introduced on the back of the training programs of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to survey their impact on the entrepreneurial behavior.

Nowadays, most of the experts believe that organizations should select effective ways for diffusing organizational knowledge among their human resources. Bias and his coworkers believe that the principal aspect of each enterprise is creation and transmission of interorganizational knowledge. Therefore, the necessity of recognition and use of effective ways for sharing and transmission of knowledge management in an organization is revealed. Organizations cannot manage the knowledge correctly because the personal knowledge is inherent and tacit. However, the operating environment may be better managed for knowledge diffusion and development. Organizations should strive to find most of the inner knowledge along with mechanisms to manage and measure it. In this paper, we explain the meaning of knowledge management and present different models. Finally, we offer our model. As a case study, the model has been implemented in Iran Zamin Oil Company.

During the last one hundred years, the organizational and management knowledge have undergone fundamental changes. At the beginning of the 1980s, organizations paid great attention to creativity and innovation. Today, organizations should be creative, so that they would continue to survive: therefore, the best way is to encourage creative people to be entrepreneurs in the organizational structure. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and abilities with organizational entrepreneurship. About 132 of Iran khodro middle managers were randomly selected. The data was gathered via questionnaires. For validity the method of Cronbachis Alpha was employed which resulted in 86% and 89% to be consistent with research tools. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurial skills and abilities with organizational entrepreneurship; The degree of organizational entrepreneurship among members varied according to sex, age, education level and service records.

The survival of rural communities depends on appropriate investments and creation of viable and sustainable job opportunities. Rural entrepreneurship is a driving engine of job creation and economic growth in rural communities. When we speak of rural business success or longevity, it seems important to determine how rural entrepreneurs define success. For the past decades, profit, growth and innovation have been the normative criteria to assess business owner's success. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate the content of the entrepreneurial success construct in more detail, by generating more insight into the way different types of rural entrepreneurs define success. This study utilized both quantitative and qualitative research design. On qualitative side, 15 rural entrepreneurs were interviewed using focus group sessions to determine success criteria that distinguish between successful and non-successful rural entrepreneurs. Content analysis was used to analyze the collected data. Results revealed 12 success criteria as perceived by focus group participants. Quantatively, a structured questionnaire was completed by 60 rural entrepreneurs with 18 statements to prioritize success criteria. Data from this part was analyzed by using multidimensional scaling. Results indicated that rural male entrepreneurs strive for contributing back to society, profit, and work-life balance. However, their female counterparts strive for work-life balance, profit, and personal satisfaction. Additionally, multidimensional scaling indicated that a two-dimensional solution best explained the rank-order of success criteria: namely, personal dimensions including personal satisfaction, work-life balance, contributing back to society; work dimensions including satisfied customers, quality of products or services, and longevity. Based on our results, which show that the personal dimension is more important to entrepreneurs than the business dimension, it is advisable to use multiple criteria in order to assess business success.

With respect to many problems in rural areas such as poverty, inequality, migration, vulnerability and unemployment, the rural entrepreneurship is of great importance. Doubtless entrepreneurship can increase the level of employment and income and play an important role for sustainable development in rural areas. In this article, through a behavioral approach and based on a procedural model indicating that personal experiments and environmental factors will affect entrepreneurship, the background knowledge on entrepreneurship is analyzed. The primary goal of this article is to determine the extent of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills in rural areas. The study area is Baraan District in Esfahan County. The research method is documental and field study and data is gathered via questionnaires. The sampling method was random and 150 people of 15-65 years of age with middle school education level were asked to fill the questionnaires. After data entry then analysis was made by SPSS software. The results indicate that only 2.33 percent of villagers have very high acquaintance and 18.76 percent of them have high acquaintance with entrepreneurship while 23.56 percent have low acquaintance and 55.35 percent have very low acquaintance with this subject. The acquaintance rate is almost the same in all indicators and variables. Therefore, entrepreneurship training and improving facilities and amenities in rural areas for attracting young, specialist and skilled people can promote entrepreneurship and lead to development in this area.