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International Journal of Social and Economic Research

Vol. 2, Issue 1, January-June 2012 pp. 22-26 A pr oduct of Diva Enter prises Pvt. Ltd.

Masters student of Entrepreneurship Management, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran

Understanding Entrepreneurs Roles, According to Iranian

Entrepreneurs (Case Study: Shiraz Industrial Town)

Amir Forouharfarand Milad Gouran

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurs play different roles according to the economists and academicians, and the priority of

these roles are different in the academic settings and the entrepreneurs real setting.This survey have

been done among 15 Iranian entrepreneurs in Shiraz Industrial Town, to understand their idea aboutthe roles that they play. Iranian entrepreneurs believe that they play the roles of firm owner, employer,

and manager.

Keywords: Role, Iranian Entrepreneurs, Priority

INTRODUCTION

The person, whom we call him/her entrepreneur,

plays some tangible and intangible roles to run its

business and firm efficiently and successfully,

although sometimes the opposite happens. These

roles are the necessary parts that the entrepreneurmust play to be called so. Many traditional and

modern authors have connected these roles with

economy and economic activities.Therefore, from

the beginning the roles of the entrepreneurs have

been defined in economic terms. Martin et al.

(2009) mention entrepreneur as economic agent

who has economic agents behaviors. And Weber

(1978, 1988), discuses about the characteristics of

entrepreneurs in his book The Protestant Ethic and

the Spirit of Capitalism, which one of them is the

religion of the entrepreneurs(called asceticProtestantism by him)that has a positive attitude

towards moneymaking. The entrepreneurs have

been the main source of employment and income

in the first decade of last century (Thurik and

Carree, 2005), so these roles were the significant

roles in that era, which inherently could emphasis

the priority of the common roles from era to era.

Entrepreneurs mostly play the same roles, but the

social environment could prioritized some of these

roles in the entrepreneurs eyes, as the most

important ones in respect to the other roles that

they play, since, our social and economic needs

form our definition of the entrepreneurial prominent

roles.

Although, establishing and running a firm, mostly

have prominent economic advantageous for the

country and society, there are some subtle non-

economic roles that the entrepreneurs play day in

and day out. These roles could be showed up in

social outcomes, like the figure, which decreases

the crime rates by making new job opportunities

that could have some impacts over wiping out some

anti-social jobs like selling drugs, and so on. These

subtle and abstract roles are not discussed in thisarticle.

In this article the traditional and modern roles,

which the relevant literature have in common, are

localized to be able to be prioritized according to

the Iranian entrepreneurs. All of the investigated

roles are somehow the economic ones.

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Understanding Entrepreneurs Roles, According to Iranian Entrepreneurs (Case Study: Shiraz Industrial Town)

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the history of economic thought, different roles

have been presumed for the entrepreneurs. The

most relevant ones have been summarized in Table1.

In the history of economics, one finds a variety of

notions of entrepreneurship, proposed by a variety

of classical and Austrian economists: Adam Smith,

Marshall, Cantillon, Say, Bentham, Thnen,

Mangoldt, Menger, von Mises, and von Hayek and,

later, Kirzner. In more recent literature, discussionsand surveys have been provided by among others,

Kets de Vries (1977), Stanworth & Curran (1973),

Scase & Goffee (1980), Casson (1982), Hbert &

Link (1982), Chell (1985), and Weinberg (1990),

Chell et al. (1991), Thurik (1996), Van Praag (1996)

and Blaug (1997). The following entrepreneurial

roles have been identified (Noteboom):

- Innovation (Bentham), Thnen, Schumpeter

and perhaps Say)

- Creative destruction by novel combinations

(Schumpeter)

- Arbitrage: the identification and utilization of

opportunities for matching supply and demand

(Cantillon, Smith, Menger, Mizes, Hayek,

Kirzner)

- The provision of capital (Marshall)

- Creating or entering new markets (Mangoldt,

Schumpeter)

- The configura tion and management of

production factors for efficient production (Say,

Marshall, Mizes)

Entrepreneur, also plays the role of investor. Martin

et al. (2009) mention entrepreneurship implies

among other things, that someone discovers the

possibility to obtain some profits and then decide to

invest. Wennekers and Thurik (1999), following the

ideas exposed by Herbert and Link (1989), Bull

Table 1: Main roles of the entrepreneur according to main authors

Main Authors The Entrepreneur is a...

Cantillon, Cole, Hawley, Knight, Mill, Mises, San Bernardo de Risk Taker

Siena, Shackle, Thtinen

Bohn-Bawerk, Mises, Pigou, Smith Contributor to Financial Resources

Bentham, Schmoller, Schumpeter, Shakle, Sombart, Thtinen, Weber Innovator

Cantillon, Cole, Keynes, Marshall, Menger, Mises, Schultz, Decision-Maker

A. Walker, F. Walker, Weber, Wieser

Marshall, Jenofonte, Saint-Simo, Say, Shumpeter, Sombart, Sectors Leader

A.Walker, F.Walker, Weber and Wieser

Marshal, Menger, Mill and Say Manager and Supervisor

Clark, Coases, Davenport, San Bernardino de Siena, Say, Orgenizer and Coordinator of the

Schumpeter, Sombart, Weber, Wieser economic Resources

Keynes, A.Walker, F.Walker, Wieser User of the Production Factors

Hawley, Pigou, Quesnay and Weiser Firm Owner

Bentham Trader

Cantillon, Schultz Allocator of Resources

Source: Herbert and Link (1982), Nijkamp (2000) and Galindo and Mendez (2008)

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Amir ForouharfarandMilad Gouran

and Willard (1993) and Lumpkin and Dess (1996)

define entrepreneurship as the manifested capacity

and desire of the individuals to create new business

opportunities. Therefore in this role entrepreneur

as the creator of new business opportunities,

introduce new procedures, processes, products,methods, etc. This aspect have been seen as the

entrepreneurs role of innovation in other

researchers point of view. Hagedoorn (1996),

mentions that in a large part of the literature on

Schumpeter one finds that attention is paid to his

early contributions, with reference to the role of

the entrepreneur as the personification of

innovation. In stressing the role of entrepreneur by

Schumpeter as innovator and debter (Hagedoorn,

1996), he presents a definition of the entrepreneur

in which risk-taking is less essential as comparedto other well-known classical theories of

entrepreneurship, in particular those in the tradition

of say and Knight (Marco, 1985). According to

Schumpeter, successful entrepreneurs might

become cap it al ist s bu t they stop be ing

entrepreneurs once they fail to continue to innovate

and return to capitalist routines (Schumpeter, 1934).

McMillan and Woodruff (2002), accentuate the role

of the entrepreneurs as reformers in the transition

economies. They believe that much of the task of

devising the new ways of doing business in

transition economies has been taken on by

entrepreneurs. Moreover, Shane and

Venkataraman (2000) believe that an

entrepreneurs role is to combine resources to

exploit a market opportunity.

Design of Questionnaire

The prioritized list of entrepreneurial roles was

compiled and simplified, as mostly summarized in

Table 1. Two other roles (employer and investor)

based on the literature review were added to Table

1. This list was the basis of questions on

entrepreneurial roles. Then 30 questionnaires were

filled and the reliability of the questionnaire wascalculated by Cronbachs Coefficient in SPSS,

which was 0.7122, and more than 0.7, so it was

acceptable The omission of none of the questions

helped the increase of the coefficient, so no

question was omitted.

METHODOLOGY

15 questionnaires were distributed among the firm

owners of Shiraz Industrial Town, which is an

industrial zone in the suburb of Shiraz, Iran. The

demographical data have been shown in Table 2.

Then, the questionnaires were collected and

analyzed by SPSS.

CONCLUSION

As mentioned before, this studys main goal is to

understand the entrepreneurs role according to

themselves (Iranian entrepreneurs). So, the

frequency (mean) of the respondents answers,

were shown in Fig. 1.

Three roles are more outstanding in comparison to

the other roles. Iranian entrepreneurs know

themselves as firm owner, employer, and manager.

These roles show that they know entrepreneurship

as establishing and running a business, which is

really far from the multivalent concept of

entrepreneurship. This could be traced back in the

educational back ground of these entrepreneurs.

Table 2: The demographical data of the respondents

Sex Age (Average) Education Experience(Average) Position

15-male 48 3-Bachelor, 12-high school Diploma 15 years 15-Manager

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Understanding Entrepreneurs Roles, According to Iranian Entrepreneurs (Case Study: Shiraz Industrial Town)

According to Table 2, 12 entrepreneurs out of 15,

which have chosen randomly, have high school

diploma. This fact beside, the employment crisis in

Iran, have made the entrepreneurs to accept that

they are employer and firm owner, and these roles

have priority to them.Even, the word

entrepreneurship in Persian translated as

karafarini, which in Persian means: the

generation of work. Since they are mostlyuneducated, they know themselves as employers.

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Fig. 1: The frequency of the Iranian entrepreneurs roles according to themselves

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