Strategies for Training and Development of Social Entrepreneurs in Iran

The purpose of this study is to present strategies for training and development of social entrepreneurs in Iran. A mixed method study was conducted in two phases: qualitative and quantitative. In the qualitative phase twelve social entrepreneurs were interviewed in-depth. The interviews were conducted based on the theatrical saturation and purposeful sampling. Then “Grounded Theory” and “Narrative Method” used for analysis. Five general categories of factors were identified as a result of qualitative phase in order to expand training and development of social entrepreneurs: public awareness and culture building, comparing study and benchmarking, more effective strategies of political and social institutions, developing entrepreneurs’ activities with training of social entrepreneurs, and initializing entrepreneurship in educational systems. In quantitative phase, 5 hypotheses were formulated based on obtained qualitative results in order to verify and generalize them. The sample size for quantitative phase of this study contains 58 CEOs or founders of NGOs using convenience sampling method. Then the data were analyzed using one sample t-test and Friedman. All components were verified except two sub-components.