Journal of New Economy and Trade
Year:2010 | Volume:6 | Issue:21-22|Papers Count:10

The socio-economic and cultural conditions of Iran in recent years has made a situation in which specific attention is given to the subject of entrepreneurship in the third, fourth and fifth development plan of the country, in particular in research and educational dimensions. Most scholars believe there is potentially some rate of creativity and innovation in all individuals but to put this potential into effect demands proper planning by managers. The middle managers have a basic role in organizations that can easily transfer their innovative views to the upper level managers and provide an opportunity to assess strategic views and priorities. Therefore, they play an effective role in creating an environment which paves way for entrepreneurial and innovative activities. The topic of entrepreneurship in higher education is one of the very important and almost new issues in academic management. In an entrepreneurial university, the organizational entrepreneurship climate and managers' entrepreneurial behavior of the university is considered a necessary condition for the success of university in putting these potentials into effect. In line with these ideals, the University of Tehran as a symbol of the Iranian higher education and a model for other organizations is expected to maintain its pioneer stand in this area. Therefore, this research studies the effect of organizational entrepreneurship climate on the middle managers' entrepreneurial behaviors at the University of Tehran. This will present a model of the establishment of entrepreneurial climate for the organization which intends to use entrepreneurial approach. The results of the paper indicate that there is a positive and statistically meaningful relation between the dimensions of the organizational entrepreneurship climate and the middle managers' entrepreneurial behaviors at the university.

Nowadays, although the role of new firms in creating jobs, innovation and competition has been known during the first years of their establishment, their failure rate is higher. Researches often focus on the external factors causing the failure, while internal factors have been less considered. This article aims to identify the internal factors affecting new firms' performance. To this end, an initial framework is developed to define objectives and design policies in the new firms' performance. Independent variables are classified into four main groups. They include financial resource, absorptive capacity at individual level, absorptive capacity at organizational level and marketing abilities. Financial performance, market performance and customer performance have been taken into account as dependent variables. The role of the mentioned independent variables is examined on the performance of 308 firms in the city of Tehran. Questionnaire is used to collect the data over the period 2007-2008. The findings show that the explanatory variables significantly predict the performance of the new firms. Among internal factors, absorptive capacity at individual level considering some aspects of human capital as well as social network of employees and entrepreneurs have the major determinants of the firms' performance.

There are several factors affecting economic growth. Identifying the main factors that influence the rate of economic growth is a controversial issue. In this respect, the institutional economists have considered the relationship between people and conflicts in human relations. Institutions by establishing a stable structure for human relations lead to reduce uncertainty in markets which reduce commercial transactions costs and increase competitiveness. This paper aims to examine the role of institutional factors on economic growth using endogenous growth models. The data employed to estimate empirical models cover the period from 2009 to 1995. According to the results of estimates, D8 countries do not have endogenous mechanisms for the internal research and development activities. External research and development spillovers have statistically significant and positive effect on economic growth. The interaction between spillovers external research and development and institutional factors such as the improvement of doing business and the quality of education as well as the observance of patent have statistically significant and positive effect on economic growth in D8 countries.

Research on knowledge-based businesses is proliferating in today’s competitive economy. Nowadays, it is extremely obvious that marketing management process is significantly affecting management of knowledge based businesses. However, there is a lack of academic research in this field and the current relevant literature is quite poor. This paper aims to conceptualize the marketing management process of knowledge-based businesses in the Arak Science and Technology Park. To this end, the qualitative approach, and particularly, the strategy of mixed case study is adopted. First a purposive (criterion-based) sampling method is selected and then in-depth semi-structured interview is performed through putting open question to ten owner/managers/entrepreneurs in the Arak Science and Technology Park. Findings of the study show that marketing management process in knowledge-based businesses is implemented in the seven successive phases as follows: identifying and understanding the customers' needs; developing products, services and processes to fulfill customers' needs; effective penetration pricing of products and services; identifying competitors; localizing and facilitating the customers' access to products and services; ensuring customers' satisfaction during and after the exchange process and finally establishing long term relationships with customers.

Nowadays, the entrepreneurial activities are increasingly considered to be important for economic growth and competitive advantage. One of the concerns of managers is investment and the efficient use of information system. In this paper, the efficiency of the information system and organizational entrepreneurship is examined using the data collected through questionnaire from the University of Tehran. A range of techniques is used to test hypotheses and estimate empirical model. The findings of the study indicate that there is a significant relationship between information system indicators in administrative processes and organizational entrepreneurship at the University of Tehran. The information system indicators included in the model comprise the level of system quality, information quality, services, use of system and user satisfaction as well as efficiency of electronic system.

The aim of the article is to evaluate the electronic advertising effectiveness in the Garment Industry. The types of electronic advertisements include SMS advertising, web advertising and email advertising. The hierarchy of effects model is used to evaluate advertising effectiveness. This model comprises three stages: cognitive, effective and conductive and six steps: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. We use questionnaire to collect the required data. A sample of 90 persons is randomly selected from the population of Qom Campus' students at the University of Tehran. The findings of this study show that none of the above electronic advertising except awareness has effectiveness in the garment industry. Results from a Friedman test revealed a significant difference among different electronic advertisings. According to the awareness step, the ranks are as follows: e-Mail advertising, SMS advertising and web advertising.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of economic globalization on government size in Iran's economy. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modeling approach is employed to estimate empirical model using the time series data over the period 1973-2007. Trade openness and foreign direct investment are employed as indicators of trade and financial globalization, respectively. Moreover, some control variables are included in the empirical model. They comprise economic growth, industrialization and urbanization growth. The results of the paper confirm that trade openness has positive and statistically significant effect on the government size in Iran. This means an increase in trade openness leads to increase government spending. However, the findings show that the effect of financial globalization on government size is not statistically significant.

The aim of this study is to examine information and design of website on e-Trust dimensions. An important factor in organizational success is the ability to attract customers trust through internet, since internet has steadily caused to increase the intensity of competition. The research population consists of sale and marketing managers in the commercial Saffron in Khorasan province. A sample of 100 sale and marketing managers is randomly selected to assign research questionnaire. The findings of this paper support the impact of the website information and its design on e-Trust.

Nowadays, commercializing intellectual properties has become one of the institutional goals of universities in the higher education system. In fact, the universities are generally taking an entrepreneurial framework. Commercialization of university research may have a positive role in the development of economies through job creations and income empowerment. Therefore, performance evaluation of university research commercialization at the higher education institutes is an important subject and it has a key function in the policy making to develop science and technology. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and rank the efficiency of universities and higher education institutions in research commercialization. The results of this paper confirm that the University of Tehran, Tarbiat Modarres University, Shiraz Technology, Basic Sciences of Zanjan and the Art University of Isfahan have relatively higher efficiently in the research commercialization and can be considered best practices.

Since export businesses need to deal with different processes in institutions and organizations to export goods, one particular set of external factors affecting export performance of businesses in international markets may classified under "administrative-service". This study aims to identity the major administrative-services barriers affecting non-oil exports of SMEs in Razavi and North Khorasan provinces. Research population consists of top managers from all firms located in both Razavi and North Khorasan provinces with certain experiences of international business. A sample of 54 firms is randomly selected among a total of 350 manufacturing firms. In order to collect the required data, questionnaire and semi-structured interview are utilized. The findings of this paper show that the "currency transfer" and "settling claims" are identified as the two serious impediments to exporting. Moreover, institutional factors are considered. The results confirm that the institutions which involved in "currency transfer" and "dispute settlement" are identified as the two sever administrative barriers.