mehdi zivdar

According to the social conditions of women as a vulnerable group in society, it is necessary to create a suitable environment for their entrepreneurial activities and study the issues of women entrepreneurs in order to identify existing limitations, modifying future policy-makings in this area, and also increasing the individual, economic and social efficiency. Therefore, in this study, the barriers of women entrepreneurship in the city of Zahedan have been studied and tested. The research method was Quantitative and the statistical population of the research was women entrepreneurs and business founders of the city of Zahedan, which includes: women entrepreneurs in companies located in Zahedan University Growth Centers, knowledge-based companies, companies located in the province Science and Technology Park and other women Entrepreneurs in Zahedan city who were introduced by the labor office. Finally, 148 questionnaires based on simple random sampling method were distributed and received among the statistical population. The required data for research analysis were collected by the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS and SMARTPLS softwares. Findings indicate that there are six categories of barriers; Includes barriers: socio-cultural, governmental, access to facilities, individual, motivational and family, affect women's entrepreneurship and prevent women's participation in the field of entrepreneurial activities in Zahedan. Individual barriers are the most important barriers to women entrepreneurship in Zahedan. Barriers of motivation, family, access to facilities, government, cultural-social are ranked second to sixth in terms of importance, respectively.

Nowadays, one of the main concerns of governments is the security of border areas. The wider and more diverse these areas are geographically and demographically, the more important it is to ensure their security. Entrepreneurial activities are among the socio-economic activities that can lead to sustainable development in border areas and the present study seeks to answer the question of whether entrepreneurship can be considered by policymakers and planners as a fundamental strategy in ensuring sustainable security of border areas. Therefor, using the qualitative method of narrative research design, concepts and theories related to sustainable security, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship development planning, and with an explanatory and interpretive approach, the functions of the entrepreneurship phenomenon as a strategy for the development of border areas were analyzed. The results show that entrepreneurship development can be considered as an efficient and effective strategy in providing security in border areas; In a way that creates a win-win relationship for both the residents of these areas and the governments. Entrepreneurship, in addition to creating numerous economic, cultural and social benefits, can lead to increased hope and dynamism, flourishing talents, abilities and capabilities of border residents. The results are in line with the general policies of the system, including population policies, land land use planning and passive defense.

The necessity of paying attention to the factor of context in current entrepreneurial research makes exploring of entrepreneurial opportunities in the tourism industry in the city of Zahedan a prominent research topic. Therefore, the present research, using a qualitative and exploratory plan, conceptualizes the entrepreneurial opportunities of the tourism industry in the aforementioned Iranian city. The statistical population of the study consists of experts in the fields of entrepreneurship and tourism. The sampling method is theoretical and the criterion for determining the sample size is theoretical saturation. Data collection was performed through several semi-structured qualitative interviews with twenty-three sample. The results of the coding, categorization and validation process led to the developing of 11 main categories (anthropological opportunity, geomorphological opportunity, dynamic opportunity, non-dynamic opportunity, placebo effect opportunity, technological opportunity, knowledge-based opportunity, abdominal opportunity, commercialization opportunity,  service opportunity,  Medical Opportunity) and 31 sub-categories as entrepreneurial opportunities in the tourism industry of the city of Zahedan. On the one hand, the research findings contain theoretical contribution to the knowledge-based domain of entrepreneurship from the perspective of the necessity of developing grounded concepts based on the dynamics and specific contextual conditions, and explain the action of entrepreneur in Iran, on the other hand. These are also appropriate for designing of relevant models, especially in the tourism industry. In this regard, and based on the research findings, some suggestions for future researches, and some practical and policy-making implications for the scientific discipline of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial actions, and policy-making in the countrychr('39')s field of entrepreneurship have been presented.

Entrepreneurial alertness as a valuable mental structure in the field of creativity as a basis for identifying opportunities and exploiting situations plays a key role in entrepreneurial intention. The purpose of this study was to identify the impact of the dimensions of entrepreneurial alertness and its relationship with entrepreneurial intention among students of Sistan and Baluchestan University. For this purpose, after identifying the conceptual model of research and statistical population and statistical sample, information of research variables was collected in the form of a questionnaire and Likert scale and the relationships between variables were explained using structural equation analysis and partial least squares method. The results showed that entrepreneurial alertness has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial intention. Three components, " Association and connection", "evaluation and judgment" and " Scanning and search" are also approved as factors for entrepreneurial awareness. By examining the results of the role of control variables on entrepreneurship alertness and intention, the only variable of education entrepreneurship courses is effective on entrepreneurial intention.

The aim of this study is to analyze the factors affecting the formation of entrepreneurial behavior of students of the University of Sistan and Baluchestan. Internal studies have conducted a limited study of some variables in the field of entrepreneurship. Therefore, in this article, by examining the theoretical foundations and previous studies, the conceptual model of research with the influence of main variables including, entrepreneurial awareness, entrepreneurial intent, trait competitiveness, and proactive personality over entrepreneurial behavior and interaction between variables were identified. The relationships between the variables were analyzed with the structural equation approach. The results showed that among students of the University of Sistan and Baluchestan, entrepreneurial awareness has an important and significant effect on entrepreneurial intent.  In contrast, trait competitiveness (TC) does not have a significant effect on entrepreneurial intent (EI), and cross-competence of competitiveness and entrepreneurial awareness (EA * TC) does not have a significant effect on entrepreneurial intent. Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial behavior (EB). Proactive personality (PP) has a positive and significant effect on the formation of entrepreneurial behavior (EB). The effect of entrepreneurial intent (EI) on entrepreneurial behavior (EB) is not affected by high or low values of proactive personality, although proactive personality is effective on entrepreneurial behavior. Therefore, the intersecting effect of proactive personality and entrepreneurial intention (PP * EI) on entrepreneurial behavior is not significant. For the two variables, entrepreneurial behavior as a dependent variable and for entrepreneurial intent as a dependent variable indicates that the fitting power of the structural model is moderate. Among the control variables, only two variables of participation in entrepreneurship courses and income earning experience have significant coefficients that participation in entrepreneurship courses is effective on entrepreneurial intent and income earning experience is effective on entrepreneurial behavior. Finally, practical suggestions for mobilizing students from entrepreneurial awareness to entrepreneurial behavior are presented.

Foresight is a systematic, continual, and permanent approach that employs a wide range of tested strategies and techniques. This process addresses the future of science and technology, markets, customers, and society, with a primary focus on business intelligence for strategic decision making, sustaining future competitiveness, and strengthening business learning and innovation capabilities. In a nutshell, foresight's objective is to propel the business forward. On the other hand, entrepreneurship is an art of investigating future principles, revealing a close connection between foresight and theories of creation and implementation in entrepreneurship. Foresight is critical in the process of establishing, growing, and consolidating entrepreneurial enterprises. Thus, while introducing and describing the concept of foresight, as well as the psychological foundations of foresight and entrepreneurial decision making, this paper discusses foresight in two distinct stages of business evolution (before and after the establishment of the business). The article then discusses foresight in three distinct stages of business evolution in order to present a distancing argument (before, during, and after the establishment of the business).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of legal management components and participation of stakeholders in the ecotourism industry on attracting business angels in Kermanshah province. This research is based on mixed (qualitative-quantitative) method. The variables of this study are based on the relative consensus of experts and have been extracted using the Delphi technique. In the first part, the sample consists of 25 experts in the field of tourism and academia, and the second part includes the distribution of questionnaires among 100 people working in this field which was selected considering three indices: Entrepreneurs, Executives and Graduates of tourism industry in Iran. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is used to test the model and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to answer the research questions using SmartPLS version 3 software. According to the results, AVE coefficient for all model constructs with greater than 0.5 and valid convergent validity indicates the impact of managerial-legal components and participation of ecotourism stakeholders on attracting business angels. The path coefficients for each are 0.38 and 0.65, respectively, so management-legal components and stakeholder engagement are effective in attracting capital, expertise and energy from business angels.

In today's world, countries try to develop themselves against other countries and communities. Accordingly, they utilize powerful motivators like the entrepreneurship. The countries with the high entrepreneurship orientation seem to be more successful than the other countries. In such an unstable situation, making use of the available techniques in the entrepreneurship approach will provide even better success opportunities for the countries. Besides, small and medium-sized enterprises not only should they focused on the entrepreneurship, but also they should be alerted about how to benefit from the available resources and techniques. Therefore, in this relationship, organizational ambidexterity can be considered as a moderator variable. The present research follows descriptive-survey methodology. In this research, 79 companies out of 99 small and medium companies operating in the industrial town of Zahedan have been studied as a sample. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire was checked through SPSS 16 and Smart PLS 2.  The results of the study show that entrepreneurial alignment is effective in open innovation. Therefore, the main hypothesis of the research is confirmed. Finally, after examining the four main hypotheses of the research, it is concluded that in small and medium-sized, entrepreneurial orientation has a positive and significant effect on open innovation due to the mediating role of organizational ambiguity.

In today's societies, meet the changes in economic activities. One of these changes is the growth and expansion of countries' attention to the small and medium companies. For achieving a Production mutation, these companies need to move towards entrepreneurship in order to compete others in the market. Since these companies’ resources are limited, they are not able to manage some of their affairs alone, so they need to spend a lot of time and money. Therefore, in addition to keep pace with the rapid growth of the knowledge and the prosperity of technology, they must take actions towards open innovation. On the other hand, in addition to emphasizing innovative ideas and exploration, companies should be able to use the resources and knowledge available in the company in the best possible way. In such situations, managers need to use organizational ambidexterity. Organizational ambidexterity is the ability to use both hands with equal skill. Therefore, companies must use both exploitation and exploration activities simultaneously.

Case study

This research was conducted in the industrial town of Zahedan, which has 145 active units. These, 99 companies, according to the definition of the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade, have less than 50 employees, which are called small and medium companies. The sample size of this research through Cochran's formula is 79 units.

Theoretical framework

Open innovation is a management paradigm with the purpose of exploitation of knowledge inside and outside the company to create new products and services. Chesbrough )2006) defines open innovation as Goal-oriented use of internal and external knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of innovation. To achieve the operational concept of open innovation, three processes of internal-external, external-internal and a combination of both should be observed. Entrepreneurship as a driving force of economic and social development plays a key role in the development process of societies. Therefore, entrepreneurial trend is a general and sustainable orientation and represents the thoughts, tendencies and interests of companies towards entrepreneurship. The present study uses Lampkin and Des’ model in 1996, which is one of the most complete models that has investigated the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation and includes five dimensions of risk-taking, innovation, aggressive competition, pioneering and independence. Due to economic and social conditions and rapid technological changes, organizations need to, in addition to using their existing capabilities, develop new and essential capabilities to compete in a dynamic environment. Therefore, we need to use a concept called organizational ambidextrousness. Duncan (1976), first, used the term organizational ambidexterity to describe the structural conflict between an organization's dual demands. Ambidexterity is an organizational capacity to the optimum achievement of two incompatible organizational goals. And the organization, while discovering new capabilities, make the most of existing capabilities at the same time. Therefore, two criteria of exploration and exploitation are used in this research. However, the research community is considered as small and medium companies. Because the government has always adopted special strategies and policies to promote small and medium industries in order to ensure competition in the free market and prevented members of the large companies to facilitate the entry of entrepreneurial companies into the field of economic.

The results show that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive and significant effect on open innovation in small and medium companyies. Entrepreneurial orientation has five dimensions. The study of the effect of each of these dimensions on open innovation is presented in the form of secondary hypotheses. Among of all, the dimension of “pioneering” (with the coefficient of 0.28) and the dimension of “independence” (with the coefficient of 0.24) have the most impact on open innovation. The study of entrepreneurial orientation on organizational ambidexterity shows that “leadership” (with the coefficient of 0.24) and “aggressive competition” (with the coefficient of 0.29) have the greatest impact on organizational ambivalence. In addition, organizational dualism directly explains 78% of the changes in the open innovation variable. Also, entrepreneurial orientation using the role of dual power mediator of 0.95 is effective on changes in open innovation.

The results of the present research hypotheses examining the effect of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, open innovation and organizational ambiguity are positive and significant. Overall, the effect of the mediating role of ambidexterity on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation has been confirmed.Therefore, the managerial actions towards the creation of entrepreneurial orientation in the organization are functionalized through conduction the ambidexterity. Consequently, organizations achieve greater consistency and permanency that eventually leads to new knowledge and ideas. This will provide the accumulative creation of new knowledge and ideas among the organizations. According to the results, implications are proposed as: developing the opportunities to conduct research and maximizing entrepreneurship among employees.Negotiation of knowledge should be made for small companies in collaboration with large companies in order to take advantages of their modern technologies; managers should create the collaboration between the research department and the executive sections for identification of new knowledge and ideas and utilize the knowledge for setting their organizational goals reaching the optimum performance.

The concept of opportunity can be considered as one of the most central and sometimes even the most central issues of entrepreneurship. At the same time, opportunity is one of the most controversial concepts in the entrepreneurship literature, as the assumptions underlying the function of identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and also the nature and characteristics of this phenomenon confront with different approaches and sometimes even paradoxical approaches. In this situation, different approaches and methods for exploiting them in entrepreneurial tasks are also desirable. While referring to the definitions and the central role of the concept of opportunity in the scientific literature of the Entrepreneurship, the present article has attempted to study the viewpoints of prominent researchers of economics and entrepreneurship fields. In the economic supply and demand approach, based on philosophical assumptions and the Means-Ends framework, models of allocation, discovery and creation are the three main patterns in the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities task. Furthermore, Schumpeterian and Kirznerian Opportunities are the two main and distinct perspectives on entrepreneurial opportunities that have developed two main streams of entrepreneurial opportunity studies and research. These two perspectives, in contrast to each other, can be examined from different dimensions of models, approaches, nature and requirements of the phases of entrepreneurial opportunities exploitation and value creation.

Decision-making by entrepreneurs is a process that cannot be explained by existing models. Literature analysis reveals a gap due to the teleological approach of existing models. This research aims to conceptualize central elements of new venture creation decision-making process in a selected sample of nascent entrepreneurs in Iranian high-tech industries based on a non-teleological approach and by a qualitative and explorative plan. The research has fundamental view and explorative purpose and the strategy of qualitative research is multiple case studies. The research sample includes active nascent entrepreneurs of high-tech nano and bio-technology industries of Tehran and the sample size was determined by theoretical saturation. After finalizing the interview protocol, data collection was conducted through qualitative event-based interviews with 20 nascent entrepreneurs. After coding, categorizing and validating the research findings, central elements of new venture creation decision-making process was recognized. Accordingly, entrepreneurial orientation and competency, entrepreneurial meta-cognition, primary actions and feedback receiving and positive attitude toward changes are the central elements of new venture creation decision-making process.

Reference to the conceptual model of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and a review of the wide-ranging literatures to be analyzed as entrepreneur-supporting variables in establishing SMEs will lead to key factors which are called SMEs establishment facilitating factors as discussed in this paper. Besides increasing the possibility of SMEs establishment, these factors affect an entrepreneur's success towards accomplishment of this goal and accelerate gaining access to positive outcomes. In a major categorization, such factors have been classified into two sets of entrepreneurial framework conditions and entrepreneur's conditions. Based on the conceptual model of GEM, the entrepreneurial framework conditions consist of factors which will facilitate SMEs. Establishment accordingly, the entrepreneur's conditions, are as stimulating levers, will provide motivation and capability of successful establishment of new SMEs by entrepreneurs. In this paper, such factors and their subordinates have been comprehensively discussed and are then prioritized by using the synthetic value of fuzzy judgments method. The target group is made up of a sample of 20 entrepreneurs and founders of SMEs in the Sistan and Baluchestan Province whereby the factors in each set, have been prioritized and, on average, reflect the precedence of entrepreneurial framework conditions over the entrepreneur's conditions.

Corporate Entrepreneurship is a major branch of entrepreneurship that plays a key role towards excellence in most organizations. On the other hand, Insurance industry as a vital infrastructure meets a considerable deficiency in accomplishing its mission in Iran, and it seems that developing entrepreneurship components in different processes of this industry and also developing entrepreneurial culture among its personnel can be a superior solution for this problem. Accordingly, this study measures the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship orientation and performance of a sample selected from among the personnel of corporate agencies of Iran Insurance Company in Tehran. In this research, "flexible structure", "effective organizational climate", "supporting and motivating culture to creativity and innovation" and "employee's individual competencies and motivation" are dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship, and "employee's satisfaction", "customer's satisfaction" and "financial performance" are dimensions of agencies performance through which their reciprocal relationships are measured. Results of correlation analysis on sample research composed of agencies personnel, totally demonstrates that corporate entrepreneurship orientation has a positive and significant correlation with performance of agencies. In conclusion, Implications regarding entrepreneurship concept for managerial practice in insurance industry, other comparable industries, and also future research programs are provided.