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Identification of Factors Affecting Resilience of Social Entrepreneurs in Iran’s Unstable Conditions

Tavakoli, Maryam | 2023

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 57320 (44)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Management and Economics
  6. Advisor(s): Tasavori, Misagh; Najmi, Manouchehr
  7. Abstract:
  8. This research, addressing the significance of conducting studies in the under-explored and vital field of social entrepreneurship in Iran, which has a profound impact on the country's sustainable development, seeks to answer the following question: "How can various internal and external factors—factors both controllable and uncontrollable by the social entrepreneur—influence their resilience in Iran's unstable environment?" By identifying and presenting a comprehensive model of all factors affecting resilience at the individual (not organizational) level and the persistence of social entrepreneurship within the context of Iran—a developing country facing a unique combination of crises and instabilities—this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge. The methodology employed in this research is a qualitative approach based on an in-depth analysis of 28 case studies, involving 32 interviews totaling 55 hours, conducted with Iranian social entrepreneurs. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, and analysis was performed using thematic analysis. The output of this extensive thematic analysis is organized into five dimensions, 25 themes, 110 primary codes (and 126 subcodes under 28 primary codes). Consequently, a foundational model inspired by expectancy theory was constructed. In the first stage, "background factors" influencing the entrepreneur's perception of internal factors (or factors in the immediate environment that are under the entrepreneur's control) and external factors (or factors in the broader environment that are beyond the entrepreneur's control) in shaping their psychological resilience capital are introduced. In the subsequent stage, the model identifies in detail "all internal factors—including the social entrepreneur's attitudes, skills, and knowledge—and all external factors" that shape the entrepreneur's perceptual process, leading to the construction of their psychological resilience capital. In the final stage of the model, the relationship between the social entrepreneur's psychological resilience capital and each stage of the social entrepreneurship process, as well as the feedback loops influencing the dynamics between the components of this system, are explained and specified. The scientific and practical achievements of this research are both novel, prominent, and noteworthy at both the national and international levels. Given that no model as comprehensive as the findings of this research has been introduced in the literature, and the topic has not been previously addressed from the perspective of expectancy theory, the output of this research can open new avenues for examining the resilience of social and even economic entrepreneurs in Iran and other parts of the world. Moreover, the outputs of this study address two significant shortcomings of expectancy theory and, by discovering the effects of several new mechanisms, contribute to the wider and more effective application of this important theory in the literature. Additionally, conducting this research for the first time in our country and in other countries in the MENA region, which share relatively similar cultural dimensions with Iran, is one of the achievements of this study
  9. Keywords:
  10. Social Business ; Social Entrepreneurship ; Expectancy Theory ; Iran ; Crises ; Psychological Resilience Capital

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