The Impacts of Demographic Characteristics and Emotional Intelligence on Entrepreneurial Leadership among Dehyars

Development of Dehyari’s cooperatives is considered as one of the strategies of entrepreneurial activities. Directing this activities require motivated and committed Dehyars (Municipality Administrators) who play an important role in the leadership of socio-economic organizations. Therefore, entrepreneurial leadership is the most appropriate style of leadership for Dehyars. In this regard, it is necessary to identify factors affecting entrepreneurial leadership for selecting and training Dehyars of those cooperatives. Hence, the main purpose of this survey research was determining effective factors on entrepreneurial leadership. This study is a “descriptive, correlational” research that was conducted using survey technique. The statistical population of the study was the Dehyars of Dehyari’s cooperatives from all over Iran (N= 839). Totally, 133 samples were determined by the Cochran formula, randomly. Data was gathered using a questionnaire whose face validity was confirmed through a panel of experts, and its reliability estimated using Cronbach's alphas coefficient (0.71 to 0.89). Findings indicated that, there is a significant difference toward entrepreneurial leadership between Dehyars’ demographic characteristics including age, Dehyari’s experience, and context of prior work experience. The findings also revealed that the variables of emotional intelligence affect entrepreneurial leadership, and social skills have the highest effect on dependent variable. The results of this study provide criteria for selecting and training rural Dehyars.