Identifying and Prioritizing the Personality Traits of Women Entrepreneurs in Khuzestan Province with Qualitative Content Analysis Technique

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran. s.mohammadi@scu.ac.ir. (Corresponding Author)

2 Associate Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran. f.rahimi@scu.ac.ir

3 Associate Professor, Department of Management, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran. m.nadaf@scu.ac.ir

4 MSc. Student, Department of Management, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran. touranargha@gmail.com

Abstract

Today women are actively involved in various areas of economic and social activities and play an important role in creating businesses. Recognizing talents, individual abilities and their creative characteristics can be very effective in exploiting and guiding the capacities of this large part of society. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize personality traits of women entrepreneurs. Therefore this study is a fundamental research with applied results in terms of purpose and it has been conducted with a mixed research framework. The target population includes all women entrepreneurs in Khuzestan province, which is the non-random sampling voluntary, 40 of them were selected for semi-structured interviews and identification of entrepreneurial personality traits. The results of the content analysis of the interviews showed 13 entrepreneurial personality traits. The results of Friedman test for ranking these characteristics showed that women entrepreneurs have the highest degree of importance in the characteristics kinship, responsibility, practicalism and having an internal control center; and the characteristic of risk-taking is the least important.
‌
 Qualitative Content Analysis, Ranking, Women Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial Personality Traits. 
‌
‌Introduction
In today's fast-paced world, entrepreneurship can serve as a powerful driver of economic growth and development in the country and increase productivity and create employment and welfare. The condition for survival in this evolving world is to use all available resources and identify and empower all entrepreneurial capacities to enable the emergence of creative initiatives and entrepreneurial activities. In the meantime, recognizing the capabilities of women and directing their creative talents, considering that today they have entered various fields of economic activities and play a role in creating large-scale businesses, can effectively exploit the capacities of this sizeable social stratum. Thus, the discovery of creative traits and talents in women entrepreneurs, as well as the identification of their experiences, can create synergy among businesswomen or pass it on to the next generation. Therefore this study aims to identify and prioritize the personality traits of women entrepreneurs in Khuzestan province as one of the provinces prone to entrepreneurship.
 
Methodology
This study aims to identify and prioritize the personality traits of women entrepreneurs. Therefore this study is fundamental research with applied results in terms of purpose and the method of doing; it is mixed research in which the qualitative content analysis technique was adopted to analyze textual data. The statistical population of this study is all women entrepreneurs in Khuzestan province. According to the official statistics of the relevant institutions in the province, there are more than 240 women entrepreneurs who, due to dispersion, difficulty and lack of access to all people, sampled in a non-random, targeted and voluntary manner. To ensure theoretical saturation, the data collection process was continued until interviews with 40 women entrepreneurs were analyzed. The qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze the data obtained from the interview‌s. Lincoln and Guba's (1985) evaluation methods were used to assessing the study's validity and reliability. Finally, the Friedman ranking test was used to prioritize the traits.
 
Findings
As the research findings show, the influential personality traits in women's entrepreneurship are: risk-taking, the centre of internal control, achievement, open-mindedness, pragmatism, challenge, ambiguity tolerance, responsibility, emotional stability, extraversion, kinship, honesty in experience, and benevolent intentions. The results of the Friedman test for ranking these characteristics revealed that women entrepreneurs have the highest degree of importance in kinship, responsibility, practicalism and having an internal control centre, and the characteristic of risk-taking is the least important. 
 
Result
The results of this study revealed that women who intend to enter entrepreneurship must first be familiar enough with the characteristics, capacities and capabilities necessary for this and enter this field consciously. The results of this research help managers and owners of entrepreneurial businesses to learn or strengthen the right way of behaving with employees, communication skills and improving the entrepreneurial spirit. Considering that the creation and development of an entrepreneurial culture in society, especially for women, can provide the ground for the mobilization of half of the population in a way that ultimately increases national production in the country and removes the problem of unemployment; Therefore, it is suggested that university administrators and policymakers make serious efforts to create conditions to increase these characteristics at the university.
 

Keywords

References

 
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