Explaining Components of Agro-enterprises Development in Golestan Province

Nowadays, enhancing agro-enterprises seems as a main strategy of fostering the agricultural entrepreneurship. Strategic policy-making for enhancing agro-enterprises and facilitating agri-entrepreneurship need to examine the constructed inter-correlated components of agro-enterprises as a complex system, contextual variables, and related dynamics. This qualitative research was done with the aim of diagnosing constructed components and influencing factors of agro-enterprise development in Golestan Province. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviewing with a selected sample (n=34) of agro-entrepreneurs and agro-enterprise managers. Using multiple coding process of Grounded Theory, the interview's contents were analyzed. Findings were formatted in a matrix structure, including open codes, axial codes, and selective codes. According to subjective categorized codes, main constructed components and influencing factors on agro-enterprise development could be explained as: personal dimension (individual motivation, social, economic, psychological and professional purposes, and personal capabilities), enterprise dimension (acquiring and management of production resources, human resource management, linkages and communications, market management, enterprise management and professional functions), learning and training in enterprise, supportive atmosphere (family support, spiritual support and institutional support), and context of enterprise development (natural environment, and social, economic and institutional surrounding environment of agro-enterprises). Based on system conceptualization, the aforesaid constructs were interlinked and "Entrepreneurial Development System of Agro-enterprises" was diagrammed.