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Institutional changes, in a historical context, through simultaneous evolutionary and metamorphic processes either deform or reform long-enduring institutions. The chapter delves into the Persian history from the early days of the reign of Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh-e Qājār in 1848 to the recent years and traces Persian institutions' historical transformations, which culminated to the Persian women entrepreneurship. Thus, the chapter first sets the historical context in each period and then sheds light on the pivotal issues of each period's women. The undergirding base of the discussions is the assumption of the change in institutions as natural metamorphosis in the animate. Finally, the discussions contribute to the conceptualization of the Institutional Triangulation and in the case of Persia, a cultural-driven triangulation, which has paved the way to the formation of a stupendously hegemonic patriarchal and masculine sociopolitical economy in Persia, that has historically affected women's institutionalization, subjugation, subordination, marginalization, socialization, emancipation, and most recently Islamization phases.

Proposition of new methods for the study of complex systems and chaos is working on the frontiers of knowledge and hence it calls for philosophical contemplation besides well-set empirical researches. Complex system studies still suffer methodological paucity. Hence, the research goal is proposing a new generic methodology in the domain of chaotic and complex systems’ behavior study. The research in the theorization section discusses the epistemology of the proposed method (philosophic belief, logical justification and mathematical warrant) for pattern formation in chaos and complexity. Later, in the section on how to use the method in practice, the procedures of finding recursions and their fractalization are illustrated for organizational power. Our discussions deepen generic understanding of the connections between chaos/complexity and fractalization and thus the potential disciplines for the implementation of the introduced method could be a large spectrum embracing the humanities to the natural sciences.

Institutions are organic entities with metamorphosis and evolutionary growth. The chapter spotlights the significance of Iranian oil in modern Iranian institutional change process from its early days in the 1900s to the 1970s while the state had the most petro-rentier budget. Thus, the ever-increasing evolutionary power of oil in forming modern Iranian institutions and its 79-year-old dynamism – embedded and analyzed critically in the Iranian and global historical contexts from the Constitutional Revolution to the 1979/Islamic Revolution – was discussed to shed light on its stupendous catalyzing and transforming features that led to Iran’s urbanization, semi-industrialization, new sociopolitical class generation, state-nation conflicts, and revolution.

The goal of this chapter is to discuss globalization ontology through the zeitgeists of historical eras. Zeitgeist or spirit of the age study of each influential age contributes dramatically to cogent comprehension of economic, social, political, cultural, and historical backgrounds and atmospheres, which have collectively molded globalization into a stupendous phenomenon. Moreover, the paper has scrutinized the concept of globalization to see whether it is an ancient concept in a new disguise or a modern all-inclusive phenomenon. Hence, the study is mostly analytical and rests upon secondary data through library study. The originality of the study lies not only in the philosophical application of zeitgeist concept for the analysis of globalization’s nature but also in the introduction of subject matter’s initial Dismantling (to its reductionistic integral characteristics) and its subsequent Mantling (to envisage them in their holistic crystallization) as a useful complementary approach to benefit both from Reductionism and Holism perspectives for the ontological discussions of immediately sophisticated and broad-ranging phenomena. Additionally, the potential implication of the study would be its contribution in theorizing globalization as a dialectical context-related phenomenon, which will undergo future metamorphic evolution by the changes in the requisites of Times (Zeit’s) and their Spirits (Geist’s).

Smart Farming is the application of modern technologies, tools and gadgets for increasing the agricultural crops quality and quantity. The Internet of Things (IoT) technology has had a prominent role in the establishment of smart farming. However, the application of this technology could be hard and, in some cases, challenging for the Middle Eastern users. Therefore, the research purpose is to identify the influential factors in the adoption and then application of IoT in smart farming by farmers with a contextualized approach in Iran, a typical Middle Eastern country. Thus, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has contextually been used as the theoretical model of the research. The results accentuated and proved the positive impacts of performance expectancy (H1), effort expectancy (H2), social influence (H3), individual factors (H4), and facilitating conditions (H5), on the intention to use IoT technology. Ultimately, the results were indicating the significant impact of behavioral intention on the actual usage of IoT technology (H6). One of the implications of the research is for the IT policymakers in the agricultural sector in the Middle East, where water and cultivable land are two valuable but scarce economic resources. Hence, smart farming could not be promoted unless the farmers had fulfilled its prerequisite factors proposed by the research results for using the IoT technology.

The paper was shaped around the pivotal question: Is SE a sound and scientific field of research? The question has given a critical tone to the paper and has also helped to bring out some of the controversial debates in the realm of SE. The paper was organized under five main discussions to be able to provide a scientific answer to the research question: (1) is “social entrepreneurship” an oxymoron?, (2) the characteristics of SE knowledge, (3) sources of social entrepreneurship knowledge, (4) SE knowledge: structure and limitations and (5) contributing epistemology-making concepts for SE. Based on the sections, the study relied on the relevant philosophical schools of thought in Epistemology (e.g. Empiricism, Rationalism, Skepticism, Internalism vs. Externalism, Essentialism, Social Constructivism, Social Epistemology, etc.) to discuss these controversies around SE and proposes some solutions by reviewing SE literature. Also, to determine the governing linguistic discourse in the realm of SE, which was necessary for our discussion, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) for the first time in SE studies was used. Further, through the study, SE buzzwords which constitute SE terminology were derived and introduced to help us narrowing down and converging the thoughts in this field and demarking the epistemological boundaries of SE. The originality of the paper on one hand lies in its pioneering discussions on SE epistemology and on the other hand in paving the way for a construction of sound epistemology for SE; therefore in many cases after preparing the philosophical ground for the discussions, it went beyond the prevalent SE literature through meta-analysis to discuss the cases which were raised. The results of the study verified previously claimed embryonic pre-paradigmatic phase in SE which was far from a sound and scientific knowledge, although the scholarly endeavors are the harbingers of such a possibility in the future which calls for further mature academic discussion and development of SE knowledge by the SE academia.

Oman, as a welfare state, should have effective administrative strategies for the promotion of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is first to reveal the innovation-based competitive advantages of Oman’s economy; then compare Oman with Qatar relative to the Global Innovation Index’s (GII) sub-indices. The strategic vision and mission of the Sultanate’s four administrative entrepreneurship-promoting strategies are relevant to indices based on GII. The secondary data of the paper is collected directly from the Global Innovation Index Reports 2009–2017 and the regressions are calculated by the authors for both Oman and Qatar. In this study, Qatar, because of its international economic scores and rankings, has been assumed as a benchmark for comparing, evaluating and estimating the distances of the scores in each GII sub-index. After processing the data, the SWOT (SWOT is the acronym for an analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of Oman relative to Qatar was developed as a reference point. The findings show Oman has near scores to Qatar in institutional aspects and distant scores with Qatar in infrastructure indices. The analysis of innovation-based competitive advantage is longitudinal and embraces the span of time from 2009 to 2017. The research implication is that formulated strategies could be applied by the Omani decision-makers for the promotion of entrepreneurship and subsequently improving economic and social welfare in the Sultanate (The social implication could be the facilitation and promotion of the sultanate economy for the betterment of economic prosperity through effective entrepreneurship). Moreover, as one of the pioneering studies in this area, the originality and value of this paper lies in its application of GII sub-indices for the first time to formulate administrative strategies for the promotion of entrepreneurship in Oman. Finally, four strategies are suggested: Economic Diversification Strategy, Human Resources Upskilling Strategy, Economic Globalization Strategy and Economic Privatization Strategy. These are in accordance with Oman’s Vision 2020, and as such enhance economic diversification and the promotion of entrepreneurship in the Sultanate.

Middle East as one of the most socially, politically and culturally vulnerable parts of the world is in an unprecedented turmoil, at least from the Second World War onward. Although there are plenty praiseworthy and socially entrepreneurial examples in some of the countries of the region, the flagrant and bare facts in this mostly war and drought stricken zone of the world with its numerous potentially smoldering social problems drove the middle eastern governments not to have a passive role but to dynamically choose strategic visions and missions and actively pave the way towards choosing social entrepreneurship strategies. This paper tries to provide an overview of the governmental SE strategies in the middle eastern countries; therefore, it is a review paper and relies mostly on secondary data, facts and figures which are issued by the authentic governmental agencies of these countries, the non-governmental operational SEOs, the UN, UNDP, UNHCR, UNESCO, GEM, ECOSOC, World Economic Forum, the World Bank, etc. Finally, the social entrepreneurship strategic views of each government in the Middle East are classified and a strategic model for social entrepreneurship strategy formulation in the public sector is proposed.

The research goal of this paper is to study the impact of innovation in an economy. This has an effect not only on the economy in general, but particularly on entrepreneurism. To narrow the focus of the study, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was chosen and two countries were selected: Egypt, which is mainly in North Africa but partially in West Asia; and Qatar, which is in the most eastern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. Egypt is the most populated country in MENA, while Qatar has one of the smallest populations. Numerical taxonomy was applied to secondary data from Global Innovation Index (GII) for 2008–2017 for Egypt, Qatar and Switzerland, which was chosen as the benchmark country. Egypt has an efficiency-driven economy while Qatar and Switzerland have innovation-driven economies. Data from these three countries formed the compound distance matrices (i.e. primary data) of the research; the GII’s annual country reports were used to specify the innovation distances within all three countries (i.e. secondary data). The results of the paper demonstrated that while emulating Switzerland’s innovation success remains a long-term goal for many countries, Qatar is far more innovative than Egypt.

If entrepreneurship is amid jungle of theories and has many theorists, its social orientation or what is known as social entrepreneurship (SE) is amid arid land of theories and suffers under-theorizing which could be inherently stemmed from its diversely proposed definitions. To be situated in an embryonic pre-paradigmatic phase, getting to a more unanimous definition in this realm is the first step in laying a solid foundation for SE theorizing. As a pioneering study, the paper aims to investigate the epistemological foundations of SE definitions critically to propose a more convergent definition for SE. To fulfill this goal epistemological justifications for the definitional components of SE are presented. Therefore, it was necessary to rely on the relevant philosophical schools of thought in Epistemology (e.g. Empiricism, Internalism, Externalism, Verificationism and Falsificationism); first to discuss the controversies and oppositions to some components of the definitions for their exclusion and then to justify some other definitional components which are mostly accepted by the scholars for their inclusion in a final SE definition. Critical approach has helped us in specifying the maneuvering of thoughts in this field and determining the epistemological and definitional boundaries of SE. Finally, a more epistemologically-supported and justified definition was presented at the end of the paper. Moreover, one of the potential contributions of this paper could be its consensus-making impact among SE scholars in defining SE phenomenon, which could also pave the way for future theorizing in SE. The originality of the paper lies in the application of Internalism, Externalism, Verificationism and Falsificationism concepts to SE definitions.

Scholars of social entrepreneurship have yet to propose a classification of strategies employed by states to promote SE. The paper’s aim is to introduce a conceptual framework for state-sponsored SEs to fill this gap. Such a necessity rises out of the strategic study of the states’ role in the promotion of SE intra- and extraterritorially. The paper not only propose strategic mix for the formulation of state-sponsored SE, but also presented a conceptual framework based on the tendency of states toward four orientations of internationalism, internalism, governmentalism and volunteerism for pursuing SE in a macro-scale. Finally, four comprehensive SE strategies namely Opened Door Strategy, Closed Door Strategy, Global Citizen Strategy and Country Citizen Strategy based on the four orientations were proposed. The theoretical implication of the framework is in its contribution to the classification of governmentally promoted SE for a more clarified study and teaching of SEs in the academic context. Its practical implication is in its application as a guideline for sound formulation of SE strategies by public organisations in the public and third sector contexts.

Human body, other animate beings, plants, and organizations are all dynamic and systemic entities. The similarity between living organisms and organizations, especially considering highly evolved organisms such as the human body, is noteworthy. Therefore, whenever an organization fails to accomplish its function and mission, an organizational symptom or disease may be envisaged to have come up; as a result, a variety of organizational symptoms and diseases can be considered. Recent studies have attempted to find analogies between the human body system and a social system such as an organization, to find analogous malfunctions and ailments, in order to enable the introduction of guidelines for the diagnosis of organizational symptoms and diseases, and their remedies and treatments. This paper deals with the concepts of biological metaphor and analogy, which have been present in organizational management for several decades. It attempts to study some subsystems of the human body analogous to the organizational subsystems, and their correspondingly analogous symptoms and diseases. Thus, some treatments and remedies are proposed accordingly, hoping to pave the way for further organizational management research within the development of clinical organizational pathology, based on the concepts of biological metaphor and analogy.

Proposed issues in social entrepreneurship, as most of the issues in social sciences are Abstract ones. For the performance assessment and implementation of timely controlling and compensatory measures, we need an effective, concrete and comprehensive model in social entrepreneurship. The aim of recent research was to make and suggest such a comprehensive SE practitioner-friendly model in social entrepreneurship to measure it quantitatively. The proposed model is a mathematical one which embraces seven most frequent qualities* of SE for the assessment of the implemented SE. The model presents seven scores by percentage for SE quantified qualities and a total score from 0 to 100 for the measurement and assessment of the SE efficiency. This model also made qualitative interpretation based on a nine-scale spectrum possible.

Since failures are inevitable where any service is offered, the subsequent complaints are predictable, and thus, considering suitable policies to handle the customers' complaints is essential. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of the perceived justice by the airline customers in the process of resolving their complaints on their satisfaction and also the consequent trust in the respective company. To this end, 273 questionnaires were distributed among the passengers of Mashhad Shahid Hasheminejad International Airport, who had at least one service failure in the last two years and had complained to the respective company. Structural Equition Modeling approach has applied to analyze the results. The results verified the effect of each aspect of justice. The study has shown that the interactional justice leads to the maximum recovery satisfaction and procedural and distributive justices stand after it. Moreover, the effect of the recovery satisfaction on customers' trust is verified too.

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 about the roles that they play. Iranian entrepreneurs believe that they play the roles of firm owner, employer, and manager.

Many studies have been carried out on the barriers to intrapreneurship or corporate entrepreneurship, but a few ones have prioritized these studied barriers to the domestic atmosphere of Eastern countries. Therefore, as a case study, Work and Social Affairs Organization in Iran has been chosen. This organization is in charge of promoting and paving the way for entrepreneurship in Iran. Based on the size of the organization, a sample of 15 employees in this organization in its Fars Province branch has been chosen. They answered to the questionnaires which had the list of barriers. Since they are familiar with the barriers to intrapreneurship in the atmosphere of Iran, the frequency of their answers (stated barriers) were shown in a final bar chart. Based on this study the tension between the values of the intrapreneur and its organization, is the principal barrier to intrapreneuship in Iran.

In order to benefit from RFID adoption, entire RFID infrastructure must first be established and supply chain companies should conduct considerable up-front analyses to assess their readiness. The purpose of this study is to survey the readiness of supply chain companies in Iran for RFID adoption. Therefore, facilities, conditions and necessary readiness for the successful adoption of RFID systems in Iranian grocery supply chain companies have been investigated. The study involved survey data from 89 Iranian grocery supply chain companies. The findings reveals that grocery supply chain companies in Iran are overall not ready for RFID adoption and to adopt these systems successfully; in the first step, technological, organizational, and environmental problems and challenges of supply chain companies must be wiped out. This subject, besides Iranian grocery supply chain companies, could be also extended to other supply chain companies in Iran. Key words: Radio frequency identification, Readiness for RFID adoption, Grocery supply chain. INTRODUCTION Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a small tag containing an integrated circuit chip and an antenna, and has the ability to respond to radio waves transmitted from the RFID reader in order to send, process, and store information. The RFID system consists of three basic components: a tag, a reader, and back office data pro-cessing equipment. The tag contains unique identification information of the item to which it is attached; the reader emits and receives radio waves to read the information stored in the tag, and the data-processing equipment processes all the collected data (Wu et al., 2006; Thornton, 2006; Sandip, 2005). At the present state of technology, simultaneous communication at a rate of 1,000 tags per second is possible, with an accuracy that exceeds 98% (Hunt et al., 2007). RFID technology is considered as ‘‘the next big thing’’ in management (Wyld, 2006, Ashon and Ilyas, 2008) and was introduced as one of the top ten technology in the world in 2004 and 2005 (Janz et al., 2005). In recent

Studying the relationships among HRCM’s dimensions and HREM is the purpose of this research which is done for the first time in HRM studies. This is an applied cross sectional research which is based on descriptive and survey studies criteria. Statistical population of the research is all the employees of the South Pars Economic Zone’s Power Plants which consists of four plants .Based on the population and according to Morgan and Krejcie Sampling Table for random sampling within confidence interval of 95% and 0.05 error, 146 employees were chosen from the plants .After reliability test by Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient, two questionnaires were used, one for the HRCM (consists of 30 questions) and another for HREM (consists of 16 questions).At the end, Pearson’s Correlation Analysis has been used for the relationship study between the two models .The results revealed significant relationships among the dimensions of HRCM with HREM and consequently between HR excellence and HR competency.

Entrepreneurship could be used as a foreign policy tool in the world of politics. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a politico-economic alliance of six Arab states in close proximity to the Persian Gulf. The council embraces the states which actively apply entrepreneurship for the promotion of their national foreign policies through ‘bait-and switch,’ 1 i.e. by showing economic incentives (baits) they prepare the ground for the involvement of foreign partners through investment or getting loans, which is then used for other politico-economic motives (switches) under numerous strategies in service to their foreign policies, e. g. with the intention of increasing foreign direct investment, political legitimacy, domestic job generation, etc. In the following, each move toward state sponsored entrepreneurship by a GCC state will be unfolded as a potential motive for foreign policy advantage(s). A state’s support of any issue, especially when it is done or motivated by those high in the hierarchy of political decision-making and has absorbed great quantities of public investments, is not independent of pushing forward the state’s political strategies and policies. Moreover, a strategic interpreter is not the oracle of Delphi, unfolding rather than predicting the latent and plausible scenarios. The application of entrepreneurship to gain or facilitate the acquisition of strategically pre-defined visionary goals of foreign policy is the exertion of the ‘soft power’ of appeal and attraction. It is killing two birds with one stone, i.e. the generation of entrepreneurship inside, and reinforcement of foreign policy outside.