JOURNAL OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Year:2017 | Volume:9 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:10

Entrepreneurship education is very important in promoting entrepreneurship and childhood is the best period to create deep entrepreneurial attitude. Therefore, educational programs in primary school must be planned towards creating awareness and improving entrepreneurial attitude. Storytelling is one of the entrepreneurship education methods in primary school. In this study we aim to verify the effect of entrepreneurship education by storytelling on entrepreneurial attitude improvement in primary school students by a quasi-experimental research design. The Teacher-researcher implemented instructional program by storytelling method in experimental group. Participants are 85 students (45 experimental group, 40 control group) in Salam Fereshtegan Yasin School in Tehran. The results point out that entrepreneurship education by storytelling improves entrepreneurial attitude as well as its dimensions including creativity, need for achievement, internal locus of control, and self-esteem in students. Also the family involving in business moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship education by storytelling and students’ entrepreneurial attitude. These findings help to prepare and implement entrepreneurship education programs in primary schools.

During the last years, franchising strategy has been considered for developing and running a business in a variety of industries. Give the lack of franchisee perspective, and the importance of franchisee’ s capabilities in demonstrating the better performance, this study examines the role of absorptive capacity, social capital and managerial capabilities in franchisees’ performance. By taking a quantitative approach, this study collected the data from 122 franchisees in fast-food industry in Iran. Structural equation modeling (Aarstad et al. ), based on AMOS 22 software is used to analysis the data in the study. The result of the study shows absorptive capacity, social capital, and managerial capability significantly affects the franchisee’ s performance. Moreover, environmental competitiveness moderates the relationship between absorptive capacity, managerial capabilities, and performance in franchised outlets.

According to the importance of entrepreneurship and strategic thinking for firms and organizations in order to succeed in this highly competitive world, the present study aims at identifying the peculiarities and characteristics of Entrepreneurial Strategic Thinking (EST). Strategic thinking is a way of solving strategic problems through which rational and convergent approaches are combined with creative thinking and divergent ones. This study is based on the presumption that the concept of strategic thinking could stand along the concepts of entrepreneurship and strategic entrepreneurship and create a new concept which would lead to performance improvement, growth and wealth creation. This study is a qualitative research with a inductive approach which used thematic analysis with developmental purposes. The research population includes strategic thinking and entrepreneurship experts. By use of the snowball technique, 11 experts have been chosen as the research sample. By coding process and accordingly with experts prioritizing, 7 categories were identified as peculiarities of EST including: Initiative, Teleology, Perspicacity, Boldly Bravery, Mobility, Clear-eyed and Utilizing of empirical knowledge.

Cognitive skills are important and necessary in one's success in life, but performing is not adequate in social life, and in order to succeed in labor and education markets, non-cognitive skills are also of paramount importance. This research, in terms of purpose, is applied, and in terms of data collection is a descriptive-survey, and aims at standardizing the non-cognitive skills self-assessment test associated with entrepreneurial intention and success. 300 male sixth grade primary schools students of Ahvaz city were selected as the sample by a multistage random sampling method (ratio). Confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach᾽ s alpha were used to analyze the data. The results of indicates that non-cognitive skills self-assessment test associated with entrepreneurial intention and success is valid for evaluating non-cognitive skills of 12 year old students. . Moreover, the results of Cronbach᾽ s alpha coefficient indicated that reliability of this test is good (between 0. 56 to 0. 8 for each of scales).

The aim of this research is to design an strategic model of social innovation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This research, in terms of purpose, is developmental-functional, and in terms of data collection is a survey. The statistical populations includes 25 experts with practical experience, scientific management and innovation in the field of social affairs in the Islamic Republic of Iran which were selected by targeted and snowball sampling method. After conducting exploratory studies and consulting the experts, eight dimensions of the macro pattern were extracted. Using the software "Smart PLS" factor analysis was performed. In order to determine the relationship between dimensions and ranking them, Interpretive Structural Modeling was used. The results showed that based on the criteria of "Conductivity impact" and " Dependence", "Foundation's values", as the key independent variable are at the fourth level, the "Social Climate", at the third level, the dimensions of "Structures and institutions", "Resources" and "Policy framework", as Joiner variables at the second level, and finally "Content", "Process" and "Governance and capacity building", as the dependent variables are at the first level.

The aim of this study is to evaluate and rank entrepreneurial university factors in Isfahan province. This study is an applied research, and mixed method (qualitative-quantitative) is used for data collection. To determine influencing factors, the population of study includes managers of incubators and entrepreneurship centers, research administrators and faculties with experiences in entrepreneurship and the selected sample of 15 is done by judgmental sampling method. The ranking has been done between great public and Azad universities of Isfahan province. At the first step, the list of factors including financial resources, human resources, structure, tangibles and intangible factors and their sub-criteria was provided using the related literature and Delphi method. The weight and the importance of factors are obtained by Analytic Network Process, and VIKOR method also is used to rank the selected universities. Among the affecting factors of entrepreneurial university, the most important is human resources. Among public universities, Isfahan University of Technology and among Azad universities, the Islamic Azad University of Najafabad and Khorasgan have the first place in terms of total factors.

The present study is done with the aim of investigating the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on internationalization by mediating role of organizational culture in active international companies in Glass and Crystal Industry of Iran. This research, in terms of its purpose, is applied and in terms of data collection is a descriptive and correlational research. Statistical population included 107 managers and experts of 9 active companies in the field of Glass and Crystal Industry of Iran. Using simple random sampling and Cochran formula, 66 persons were selected as the sample. The data gathered by questionnaire which its validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability was approved by composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha. For data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used with partial least squares (PLS) approach and Smart PLS software. The findings of research show that all hypotheses are accepted. The positive impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the internationalization of the companies was confirmed, and we conclude that 69 percent of the total impact of entrepreneurial orientation on internationalization is determined through indirect mediating variable of organizational culture.

In general, the entrepreneurial process is divided in two smaller process called "opportunity discovery" and "opportunity exploitation". The major focus of this research is the process of discovery. Prior knowledge of entrepreneurs was recognized as one of the main factors influencing opportunity recognition process. The tourism industry has great potential for entrepreneurial activity and those who are entering in this field have different levels of education and skill. The aim of this study is to identify the role of previous knowledge in the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. In order to evaluate the effect of previous knowledge to identify opportunities, four dimensions of prior knowledge identified based on literature review, then a conceptual model was developed and the assumptions were determined. The measures of and research and questions were determined based on literature review. The validity of its content was checked based on expert opinion. Statistical data is collected from the entire community, including senior executives of 80 tourism agencies. 67 questionnaires were completed. The research results suggest that technology and market knowledge has a direct and significant impact on opportunity recognition. But market has no service knowledge has no effect on opportunity recognition. The results also showed a significant correlation between market knowledge and opportunity recognition.

This paper set out to address the sociological explanation of rural entrepreneurship. The rural and sociological aspects are very rare in the entrepreneurship discipline, especially in Iran. The research main questions including that what are the critical cultural and social components of rural entrepreneurship, and how is the meaning relation of these components with the rural entrepreneurship as a distinct phenomenon. Using Burrel and Morgan Matrix in social science, the paper through the content analysis that is a qualitative method, has tried to shed a critical light on the mainstream discourse of rural entrepreneurship in the country. Doing twenty semi structural interviews with rural entrepreneurs that have been selected purposeful, and rural experts throughout the country, the main results of the research are: (1) the rural entrepreneurship discourse in Iran is governmental and economic, (2) the rural entrepreneurship discourse in Iran has influenced by productivist approach in agriculture, and (3) the entrepreneur’ s agency in the government and firm level is not so influential and active. In the last section of the paper some theoretical, practical, and research recommendations have been presented.

Cluster development agent (CDA) is a person or a group who has a central leading role and critical function in all stages of cluster development process. CDA as an important agent of change, has full authority in executing the cluster development project, where he has a leading and facilitating role throughout the cluster developing path. Therefore, it could be claimed that the success of the cluster development project directly depends on the CDA's competencies. CDA's competencies could be divided into two different categories: general and process-based competencies. General competencies refer to a set of knowledge, skills and traits which a CDA is expected to possess at all stages of cluster development process in order to illustrate an appropriate performance. The current study aims to identify CDAs’ general competencies in Iranian industrial clusters. This exploratory study has been done implementing qualitative narrative interviews with a sample of 15 CDAs who were purposefully selected and participated in the study. The interviews had been continued till when the theoretical saturation has been granted. Findings of the current study highlighted the CDA's general competencies as following: Negotiation and bargaining skill, Administrative skills, Professional ethics observance, Effective social networking skill, Influencing and persuasion skills, Institutionalizing skill, feedback giving and acceptance skills, role modeling and benchmarking skills, the teaching-learning skills, problem-based decision-making, information and cluster advertising skills. These findings are discussed and their implementations are outlined in the paper.