فصلنامه توسعه کارآفرینی
سال سوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 8، تابستان 1389)

Social entrepreneurship is defined as an innovative activity which creates social value. It can be utilized within or across the nonprofit or business sectors. Today, social entrepreneurship is considered an effective and sustainable method for social and economic development and attracts the attention of various start a in the society; this concept will demand particular contemplation in Iran. This research is based on Austin’s social entrepreneurship framework, and attempts to find the answer to the two following questions:• what are the influential factors in social entrepreneurship development in Iran?• what is the prioritization of such influential factors?The statistical population in this research was made up of 108 people chosen from among social activists including, founders or managers, employees, staff members, volunteers and advocates who were active in social ventures in business or nonprofit sectors. A questionnaire was used as the main tool for data gathering. In order to analyze the results, different statistical tests including Kolmogorrov-SmirnovTest, T-Test and Friedman Test were used respectively. The outputs of the research indicate that all of the five factors stated in the conceptual model play important roles in developing social entrepreneurship in Iran with prioritization of: people, SVP, context, opportunity and capital.

"Social Entrepreneurship" is one of the topics which have recently attracted more attention in academic communities. It is an entrepreneurial approach to creating solutions for social problems and unmet needs and expectations in the society, transforming them into authentic opportunities to create social value. In most communities, many social needs are not heeded by the state, public sector and private sector; therefore the level of needs start to grow increasingly. An entrepreneurial approach will be a “natural” way to address a problem or a need. In this research, attempt is made to study the individual characteristics that may influence social entrepreneurship towards development of charities in Tehran. Charities are the largest, oldest and most comprehensive institutions of civil society in Iran. The research shows that social entrepreneurs have two dimensions in their personal and behavioral characteristics. One is a "common dimension" which covers the characteristics that are seen in all entrepreneurs.The other one is "special characteristics" which signify personal and behavioral traits and are seen just in social entrepreneurs. This study demonstrates that, in addition to these characteristics, individual social capital and social responsibility also play a role in the development of social entrepreneurship. The research concludes that the two features of social capital and individual social responsibility are primarily the most effective factors in development of social entrepreneurship. Additionally, entrepreneurial psychological traits, personality characteristics and demographic characteristics stand in the next position.

Entrepreneurship development in economic activities and business is a process that plays a vital role in keeping continuous growth and development at national level. Therefore, developing a framework is essential to assess the entrepreneurial level of activities and businesses in order to establish suitable conditions for logical support of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. The main objective of the present applied research is to identify and prioritize the components contributing to business entrepreneurship aimed at improving assimilation of entrepreneurship researches based on the survey method. In the first phase, with the review of literature and interview with related experts, entrepreneurship components of business and its indices were formulated. Then the formulated component was compared via the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) by entrepreneurship experts who were selected purposefully. In the second phase, by assessing the entrepreneurs, viewpoints who participated in the superior entrepreneur festival, items of each component were ranked and entrepreneurial level of their business and activities were specified. The results of AHP showed that components: such as Innovation, Entrepreneurship Opportunity, Growth, Risk-taking, Business Plan, Level of Job Creation, Importance of Business for regional and local development and finally entrepreneurship effective rate, have the highest priority to determine entrepreneurship level of business. Accordingly, the results of assessing entrepreneurship level of business of respondents revealed that 60% of entrepreneurs were at medium level, 16/92% at low level and 23/08% at high level.

When an entrepreneur wishes to establish a business, the required financial resources are often limited to the capital he/she raises and this stage is likely the most complex and difficult one. One of the financial resources in this stage is venture capital companies (VCs) which have recently the attracted the attention of the government authorities in Iran as a practical way for entrepreneurship development. Researchers in this article try to review venture capital factors in evaluating business plans and finding the importance of their position in this process. We gathered the data by studying different books and articles, interviewing with experts by using questionnaires: we finally analyzed them with the aid of Analytic Network Process (ANP) method. The criteria used in the order of importance were: market, management, finance, VC and product.

Studying the process of economic growth in developed countries is characterized by entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurs in economic growth along with job creation on a large scale. In our country, to achieve development and create employments which are the main concern of officials and planners will necessitate paying special attention to the development of entrepreneurship and support for entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to determine the barriers to and strategies for strengthening entrepreneurship in agricultural higher education. A descriptive–correlation survey approach was used in this study. The population consisted of agricultural entrepreneurs that received loans for entrepreneurship and employment from the Agricultural Bank of Zanjan Province during the years 2000 to 2006 (N=65). The questionnaire was used for data collection. Through the factor analysis, factors for strengthening entrepreneurship in agricultural higher education were reduced to three main ones: The first factor was planning with 24.218 percent of the variance and given value 2.906 had the first support for success and further development of entrepreneurial activities. Also, the results showed that, economic incentives with 21.428 percent of the variance as well as legal and support factors with 18.402 percent of the variance have manifested for successful development of entrepreneurial activities.

In recent years, women have demonstrated more tendencies to have university education and each year their entries to universities have been on the increase. The purpose of this study is to identify entrepreneurial capabilities of female students in the Ahwaz- Ramin Agricultural & Natural Resources University. This study was conducted in 1386. The whole population was 440 agricultural female students at B.Sc. and M.Sc. levels. By using stratified proportional random sampling, 159 persons were selected for study. For data collection from students a structured questionnaire was used. The data were collected by using a questionnaire which its validity (face validity) was obtained by a panel of experts and university professors. Its reliability measured by Cronbach Alpha Coefficient was tested and α=.93 showed the reliability of the questionnaire. T Test and Analysis of Variance (F Test) in SPSS/win 15 software were used for data analyzing, and factor analysis method was employed to analyze the mean differences among groups. The findings indicated that, based on the academic fields and different years of education, there was a significant difference among entrepreneurial capabilities, and achievement motivation abilities in female students. Also it was found that there was a significant difference between entrepreneurial capabilities, achievement motivation and internal control abilities in female students. Considering the parental positions there was a significant difference among students in entrepreneurial capabilities, but based on the differences in study program and based on parental education, there was not any significant and positive relationship between students, entrepreneurial capabilities.

Considering the importance of entrepreneurship in the economic and social progress of developed countries, analysis of the entrepreneurship process and causes of its failure and success in the context of economic, social, and cultural conditions of our country will significantly help its advancement, creation of new job opportunities and will decrease dependency of economy on oil. The purpose of this study is to identify the causes of business failure in Iran and determination of their level of importance based on the survey of an acceptable number of unsuccessful entrepreneurs by using questionnaires. The results of this research illustrate that there are three external causes of failure: inadequate economic sphere in the society, public policy and procedures, and inadequate financing by financial institutions and banks and three internal causes of failure: work despondence, unreal evaluation of business plan, and non- participation in entrepreneurial networks.