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This chapter seeks to highlight the important role that the Iranian diaspora will have in a post-sanctions Iranian economy by mapping its political economy. In a 10-year period of analysis, I show that Iran remained a mostly patrimonial state that also became slightly less statist over, yet showed the potential for liberal economic reform. Thus, even though Iran may seek to incorporate liberal economic policies, patrimonial and statist elements will remain quite strong within Iran’s economy for years to come. The key asset of the Iranian diaspora then will be its integration with Western societies. This depth will allow expatriates to bridge the information gaps that will undoubtedly develop as foreign direct investment increases. Most foreign firms will find this expert guidance quite valuable when attempting to navigate the Iranian political economy.

Tourism in Iran and Iranian tourism policies are more a consequence of the country’s political economy than from explicit planning. The emphasis on adhering to domestic social norms, and the obligation on inbound tourism to obey these rules, have had no other result than a reduction of its markets. Iran’s present share of tourism is as low as 1/800th of the glocalized tourism industry. This chapter discusses the main factors influencing tourism development in Iran, particularly the political economy and oil.

One of the concepts most commonly evoked in order to characterize and explain the zig-zag trajectory of political dynamics in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the “middle class.” Yet there is no scholarly consensus on a fundamental approach to identification and measurement of the middle class. Rather, the category of the middle class is both a category of analysis – long debated within social theory – as well as a category of practice – routinely deployed in political behavior and social distinction. In order to better conceptualize and understand the formation and role of Iran's middle classes in the country's sociopolitical dynamics, theories of class formation in the global South should be rearticulated away from a reified notion of the middle class as a transhistorical subject. To do so, this chapter is divided into four sections. First, internal debates over the role of Iran's middle classes in the country's recent political history are assessed and data from the 2016 Iran Social Survey is used to test a long-standing demographic assumption on the class dynamics of electoral behavior. Second, the tradition of theorizing the social power of middle classes is reassessed, drawing on the growing scholarly attention to the heterogenous origins and differentiated internal composition of middle classes across the global South. Third, a typology is proposed of four middle classes across the twentieth century shaped by varying state attempts at “catch-up” development. These types are then applied in a revisionist telling of the making and unmaking of middle classes in postrevolutionary Iran. Finally, implications of this framework beyond Iran are sketched out for global waves of protest in the twenty-first century.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic effects of the oil price shocks on Iran’s inflation in the period 1993:2–2018:2

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic effects of the oil price shocks on Iran’s inflation in the period 1993:2–2018:2 using the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model. The dynamics of the results enable us to study the amount and severity of the impact of the oil price shocks on inflation with the distinction of the sanctioned and non-sanctioned periods. The volume of oil export is used to identify the effective oil sanctions. The period is divided into sanctioned and non-sanctioned periods by Markov switching model.

The results show that the pass-through of oil price shocks into Iran’s inflation are time-varying, and there are significant differences at sanction period from other time horizons. An increase in oil price has a positive effect on inflation and its effects are stronger during the sanctions period. It is also observed that the producer price index is more sensitive to changes in the oil price than the consumer price index. The necessity of the government’s earnest efforts to improve international relations to lift the sanctions, along with diversification of exports, and making the economy of Iran independent of oil revenues is obvious.

In addition to the exogenous oil price shocks, Iran’s economy faces numerous restrictions for its oil exports due to the sanctions. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics effects of the oil price shocks on Iran’s inflation in the period 1993:2–2018:2 using the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model. The dynamics of the results enable us to study the amount and severity of the impact of the oil price shocks on inflation with the distinction of the sanctioned and non-sanctioned periods. The volume of oil export is used to identify the effective oil sanctions.

Transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies is a fairly new concept with respect to new ventures in such challenging economic environments. Formal institutional voids are sometimes held up as a reason for the difficulties present in distressed economies, along with exogenous shocks and other upheavals. In this research, the authors seek to contribute empirically and theoretically as to ways in which formal institutions voids can be filled by a culture developed by transitional entrepreneurs. Indeed, in transition economies, formal institutions need to be enhanced by informal institutions to control corruption and other misbehavior by authorities. Iranian economists emphasize these essential reforms to be able to manage current difficulties, yet top down policies cannot help transitional entrepreneurs benefit from the country’s value-adding cultural heritage to informally address this. To study this, qualitative research methods were used to interpret transitional entrepreneurs’ ideology and ethical routines as the ingredients of a commercial culture that can establish soft law that substitutes for formal institutions. This helps to reduce the disfunctionality of formal institutions in distressed economies.

A thematic analysis interviewing key Iranian entrepreneurs and economists is conducted. Also based on an interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic cycle has been carried out on selected texts. Results have been verified throughout related literature as to come up with a solid synthesized interpreted outcome.

This paper contributes to theory from a new perspective by discussing transitional entrepreneurship and navigating a distressed economy; in which, ideology and ethics as the ingredients of soft law (Newman and Posner, 2018) are discussed as the base to further develop a commercial culture that fills voids of formal institutions. The formal–informal institutional cycle in distressed economies as the major difficulty entrepreneurs face (Peng and Luo, 2000) is important, because they try to increasingly enhance their move toward a market orientation (Bruton et al., 2008). The authors contribute as to how transitional entrepreneurs can complete this process of adaptation and also the fact that those informal institutions do actually respond to those adaptations. The other contribution is to enrich theories about institutions from the point of view of culture. Knowing these facts helps transitional entrepreneurs, because in distressed communities, formal institutions’ function has an important effect on economic performance (Amorós, 2009). This research’s contributions shed light to help government leaders understand the pros and cons of their actions forced on the industry. As it has been characterized in this research, it can turn in to new formal set of legitimacies (Ahlstrom et al., 2008) to root out corruption and help set the economy on a path to innovation and new venture creation.

Transitional entrepreneurs can depend on the less formal cultural-cognitive aspect of ethics and ideology. These entrepreneurs can be working on the burgeoning private sector, who want to connect with the outside effectively to overcome an economy in distress. Transitional entrepreneurs may face governmental institutional intermediaries as a barrier. Formal intermediaries tend to benefit from inefficiencies caused by hierarchal orders and will improve informality in order to overcome difficulties. In this research, institutional theory from the third pillar of the cultural-cognitive sheds light on transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies, where inquiry is to fill voids of formal institutions as a process of possible linking between new generated soft law derived by beliefs, ideology and professional morality in order to influence (old) legitimacies. The research’s focus evolves on values transitional entrepreneurs utilize to build informal institutions and then impact further on formal institutions to handle distressed communities. This theoretical background expands on subsections to define conceptual building blocks for the study, essential aspects such as individuals as transitional entrepreneurs, the values they utilize to generate soft law, informal institutions and soft law, to manage voids in formal institutions and legitimacy building aspects in policy agenda setting for transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the contextual factors that influence entrepreneurial intention to start the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Iran and to investigate why some manufacturing sector entrepreneurs achieve growth objectives while others do not.

In-depth semistructured interviews of 25 participants were used to investigate the contextual factors of entrepreneurship intention. On the basis of the data collected, a thematic content analysis has been carried out.

A set of contextual and cultural factors has been highlighted by the analysis. Data analysis led to the extraction of three main themes: external, internal and personal factors that were found to be significant determinants of entrepreneurship intention. In relation to the effect of these factors on their entrepreneurial behaviors, it emerged that there were the major barriers to entrepreneurial intentions including lack of resources, financial challenges and economic situation, which affected how they made strategic decisions about their plans. Moreover, the findings show that the key dimensions of organizational structure, public policies, social media, education and soft skills development are vital features and being influential in entrepreneurship.

The study has industry-specific, size-specific and region-specific limitations. The qualitative research approach affects the generalizable character of the results.

The research findings have important implications for practicing entrepreneurs, start-ups and policymakers. The manuscript suggests a transition to a more collaborative approach from experts and practitioners in the field through policymakers to tackling the underlying determinants of entrepreneurship intention in Iran as a motive to economic growth. This research is significant since its findings should help regulators and investors better understand the opportunities and threats among manufacturing SMEs. This study implies a step forward in research into the entrepreneurship intention and SMEs literature, since the results differ from the evidence found for large companies in developing countries such as Iran. There is also a great contribution toward the debate regarding the need to consider the context and the type of firm in enterprise development studies.

This is the first empirical study conducted in Iran that explores three key elements of entrepreneurship intention interactively in Iran through qualitative research analysis. The research study fills a literature gap on the determinants of manufacturing SMEs’ functions. This manuscript explores the contextual factors that influence on entrepreneurial behavior in a conflict country context, using a thematic analysis for in-depth results. A new approach to evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities was used. The advantage of this empirical strategy is that it takes into account in more detail the content observations and experiences with the industry-specific insights. It also gives more description about the contingent nature of practice. Moreover, this qualitative research acknowledged the areas of conflict and contradiction around entrepreneurship phenomena among SMEs.

Due to the political, economic and infrastructure barriers and risks that international entrepreneurs (IEs) face when researching an emerging economy's agrifood sector, this research aims to identify the major barriers, analyse their relationships, quantify their importance, classify and rank them. Thus, the IEs will gain a better understanding and vision of their decision-making processes in this era.

To do this, the authors first created a list of barriers to entry for IEs into Iran's rising economy's agrifood industry. Following that, a multi-layer decision-making approach was developed and implemented to accomplish the research objectives. The first stage utilized a hybrid of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) to depict the level-based conceptual model and classification of the IEs’ obstacles to entry into the agrifood sector. Following that, a hybrid decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and analytic network process (ANP) called DANP was utilized to present a causal relationship between the barriers, identify their causes and effects, and also quantify the relevance of each barrier.

After employing the multi-layer decision-making approach, the results demonstrated that fundamental limitations, including infrastructure and technology limitations, are the most critical barriers alongside policy factors encompassing governmental support and access to global or regional economy/market. According to the results, innovation and economic sustainability of the agrifood supply chain also matter. All of these critical barriers are intertwined and should be planned and solved simultaneously. Furthermore, based on DANP results, the sustainability pillars (economy, environment, society), besides the low efficiency of the agrifood sector in Iran, should be investigated further for future policy makings.

A hybrid multi-layer decision-making approach has been used for analysing the barriers of investment in the agrifood sector of the emerging economy of Iran for the international entrepreneurs. Moreover, the authors provide implications and insights for IEs and officials for decision-making in the future.

Entrepreneurship, in many low-resilient economies, plays a critical role in overcoming external shocks. Thus, it is crucial in such situation that entrepreneurial firms can survive and even grow so that the whole economy can benefit from a higher level of resilience. The purpose of this study is to understand how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) brings about firms' performance through the moderating role of CEOs' self-transcendence values in the context of a low-resilient sanctioned economy.

This is a quantitative research that employs hierarchical regression analysis of a sample of 114 Iranian entrepreneurial firms composed of 62 knowledge-based and 52 creative firms.

The analysis revealed that in the low-resilient sanctioned economy, Iran, EO-performance link is moderated by the level of CEOs' self-transcendence value, that is, higher level of CEO self-transcendence leads to stronger impact of EO on performance. This moderation is not different in creative sector vs. knowledge-based sector of the economy.

This paper addresses a major gap in the traditional EO-performance relationship which is related to the role of CEO values. Also, the context of Iran's low level of economic resilience adds more novelty to this study, emphasizing on the role of CEO personal values of self-transcendence in times of crisis. The results could also be generalized in many economies now facing the COVID-19 pandemic crisis during which CEOs' self-transcendence values are vitally important in overcoming the difficulties of doing business in such situation.

This chapter demonstrates that women challenge oppressive gender relations by engaging in active agency at different levels. Iranian women’s struggles for gender equality show a critical consciousness of the politics of local male domination and an indigenous contestation of the cultural practices which sanction injustices against women.

This chapter is based on the findings and analysis of the book, Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century in Iran. It is the result of the political and personal experiences of a number of Iranian women academics, journalist and activists who live and work in Iran.

Based on the updated findings and new statistical data, this chapter argues that women, despite their high level of education and activism, continue to face gender inequality, in particular in the sphere of employment.

This chapter is intended to counter the often inaccurate and misleading impressions put forward by the media, politicians and some academics in the West when they talk about Iranian women. Within the broader feminist theoretical positioning, the aim of this chapter is to contribute to the debate on essentialism and the stereotype of Iranian women as submissive Muslim women without agency.

Feminist knowledge production is diverse. Nonetheless, consideration of the historical and geographical locations of feminist knowledge production is vital to our understanding of the complex processes of women’s liberation. Thus, Iranian women’s voices are important to what is traditionally understood as feminism.