Defining the Effective Factors in Iran’s Export-led Industrialization

This study aimed to identify and categorize the factors affecting Iran’s industrial growth using an export development approach. After library studies, examining previous experiences in Iran and other countries, and identifying the influential factors, the basic conceptual model was extracted, including seven dimensions and 39 factors. Then, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with industry professionals in the field of exports to validate and discover other possible factors. After that, the findings of the two stages were coded and analyzed to implement the content analysis technique. In addition, an academic expert validated the final model in 7 categories and 36 dimensions, and the Cohen’s Kappa index was 0.679 for the final model. Based on the findings of this study, the factors affecting Iran’s industrial development were categorized into seven categories: market-oriented, infrastructure-oriented, resource-oriented, government-oriented, institutional-oriented, approach-oriented, and risk-oriented. The market-oriented category included: competitive advantage, marketing research, export portfolio diversity, service availability, and participation in the global value chain. In addition, the infrastructure-oriented category consisted of monetary/financial/banking infrastructure, e-commerce, logistics, industry structure, and insurance. Moreover, the resource-oriented was comprised of productivity, labour market, foreign investment, social capital, spatial planning, quality raw materials, technology, and innovation. Besides, the government-oriented category involved export promotion policies, economic stability, political stability, quality of education, quality of health, quality of business ecosystem, and stability and transparency of laws. Furthermore, institutional-oriented was made up of the quality of industrial clusters, power of export organizations, and removal of cumbersome processes and laws. Additionally, the approach-oriented category included export strategy in enterprises, export strategy in the country, entrepreneurial culture, and consumer culture. Finally, the risk-oriented category consisted of resilience against natural factors, global crises, and fluctuations in energy carrier rates).