Analyzing resilience of rural businesses in Malekan County

Entrepreneurship development and continuing activity of rural enterprises in the unsteady and challenging business environment necessitates recognizing resilience and planning for its improvement in the businesses. Many rural small and medium-sized enterprises fail in early years, because of inappropriate resilience. Thus this study has investigated resilience of rural businesses’ owners and explored factor structure of resilience in their businesses, using quantitative method. This research is applied survey research. The sample was 120 non-farm rural business owners in the Malekan County, province of East Azerbaijan, Iran. Instrument of this research was a standard questionnaire designed on the basis of Conner- Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and Lifespan Resilience Scale-Business (LRS-B). Data were analyzed using SPSS23 software. Results of the exploratory factor analysis indicated that the six factors have explained about 69 percent of construct entitled “resilience of rural businesses”, including: capability for adaptation and foresight (23%), interaction with customers (14%); opportunity-seeking (11%); support from family (8%); strategic planning (7%) and governmental support (6%).