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In practice and in theory, as the findings of this research reveal, the Iranian business community is a new and different, nonconforming immigrant group in the United States. This study explores certain aspects of the Iranian business community in light of a survey done by the author.The article compares and contrasts findings of the survey with those of existing literature that has been written about the business communities of various ethnic groups.The results of this study disagree with the literature in most areas. One difference is that the Iranian business community in the United States does not fit into the general understanding that ethnic groups have economic enclaves and niches. They are dispersed in all 48 contiguous states, and their businesses cover practically any possible line of entrepreneurial activity.These entrepreneurs are highly educated, and 76 percent of them are between 30 and 50 years old.Among them, 84 percent are male, a typical American profile.

Offers a rare insight into the dynamics, realities and potential of the Iranian business community. Uses a sample of 40 Iranian executives to empirically study the impact of the economic constraints and the values of executives on the performance of Iranian business organisations. Emphasizes the implications of this study to Iranian business organisations and their current and potential trading partners during this period of proposed economic change in Iran.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors impacting successful Iranian women entrepreneurs. The factors include: self‐efficacy, risk taking, negative stereotypes, and societal culture and traditions.

The paper utilizes interviews conducted with a sample of successful Iranian women entrepreneurs and examines the challenges they had to overcome, as well as their success factors.

Challenges caused by the negative stereotypes and traditions of Iranian society are barriers successful Iranian women entrepreneurs had to overcome. The possession of personal internal factors such as high levels of self‐efficacy and risk taking positively impacted these women's success.

The interviews were not conducted by the authors and were published in Farsi, so there may be interpretation and/or translation issues. However, there are few empirical studies on Iranian women entrepreneurs, and this research is one of the first that contributes to a better understanding of this important group of entrepreneurs. Further empirical research is needed to advance knowledge of Iranian women entrepreneurs.

The paper contributes to the scarce knowledge about Iranian women entrepreneurship, by introducing readers to this unique subgroup of entrepreneurs. It represents a starting point to an important area of research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if, and how, investments in IT at different levels can create new product development (NPD) capabilities in terms of IT leveraging competence in NPD and NPD effectiveness. The paper also investigates how Iranian small businesses (SBs) can achieve desired marketing performance through developing these capabilities.

The paper is consistent with the perspective on IT‐enabled organizational capabilities. A questionnaire‐based survey was conducted to collect data from 218 businesses or NPD managers of SBs in Iran.

IT leveraging competence in NPD and NPD effectiveness are valuable key capabilities that transform the value of IT resources to a firm's performance for Iranian SBs. Investments in both technical and human IT resources have positive effects on the development of NPD capabilities, and thus performance in the surveyed SBs.

Among other limitations, relying on a small sample size and cross‐sectional data of this research, and lack of generalizability of findings tend to have certain limitations.

The results suggest that the investments in both technical and human IT resources increase firms' ability to develop effectiveness in NPD. However, IT investments strategy should be aligned with effective use of IT functionalities, as the effect of IT leveraging competence in development of NPD effectiveness is more pronounced. Second, IT leveraging competence in NPD and NPD effectiveness are important intermediate organizational capabilities through which the benefits of both technical and human IT resources are converted into performance effects at the firm level for Iranian SBs.

This case study explores how Iranian SBs can develop NPD capabilities, and subsequently, marketing performance, a topic that has received little attention to date.

Based on theories from the innovation diffusion literature, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model of electronic commerce (EC) adoption in small businesses (SBs) of developing countries. The research model specifies variables at managerial level as the primary determinants to EC adoption in SBs.

A questionnaire-based field survey was conducted to collect data from 268 owner/managers of SBs in Iran. The data were analysed using factorial analysis. Subsequently, six hypotheses were derived and tested by hierarchical multiple regression and logistic regression analysis.

Perceived benefits, perceived compatibility, perceived risks, perceived costs, and innovativeness were found to be the significant determinants of decision to adopt EC. Likewise, discussion on discriminators between adopters and non-adopters of different EC applications has been provided.

Cross-sectional data of this research tends to have certain limitations when it comes to explaining the direction of causality of the relationships between the variables. The study focuses only on the manufacturing SBs of Iran.

The research findings have important implications for practising managers, information systems experts, and policy-makers. Governments should follow specific policies to facilitate institutionalisation of EC in SBs. Similarly, EC vendors and technology providers should collaborate with SBs to enhance the compatibility of different EC applications with specific characteristics of these businesses.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is perhaps one of the first that examines the adoption of EC by SBs in a developing country context, using a research model which tests the effects of owner/managers' attributes on adoption of simple and advanced EC applications.

Issues of language in international business have been the focus of a growing body of theoretical and empirical work. This paper aims to contribute to this literature, focusing specifically on issues of translation. The role of translator will vary depending on the language strategy adopted, with strategies linked to differing perspectives on language in international business – mechanical, cultural and political. The paper examines these perspectives through the lens of a specific problem for transnational communication – “untranslatable” words and concepts.

Interviews were conducted with professional linguists (translators and interpreters) to explore how they dealt with issues of untranslatable but cultural salient words in their day‐to‐day work with international businesses, using the problems of translating the Farsi word tarouf into English as a case in point.

The linguists agreed that tarouf was an untranslatable word, and described their strategies to deal with this problem. The commonest strategy was avoidance, stemming from linguists' concern to maintain their professional standing with clients, a finding which reflects an emerging emphasis on the importance of context and relationships for understanding inter‐cultural communication.

The study highlights the crucial role of the translator in international business, and draws attention to the potential for cross‐cultural communication problems arising from mutual lack of awareness of culturally‐salient but inherently untranslatable words or phrases.

Effective inter‐cultural communication is an issue of great importance to wider society, and business has historically been the commonest site of such communication. The study highlights an issue of considerable importance for improving inter‐cultural communications, contributing to a growing inter‐disciplinary literature in this area.

Much of the research on language in international business has focused on the emergence of English as a lingua franca, but the present study focuses on specific issues of translation and does so in an under‐researched location, Iran. It draws attention to a problem of translation not widely discussed, and shows how important this issue can be for international business.

Despite the expansion of women's entrepreneurial activities and its positive effects on the economic development of societies, women still face numerous difficulties in starting and running a business compared to men, especially in developing countries because of gender discrimination in the field. The cultural context in societies is a significant factor affecting the status of entrepreneurship among the Iranian women. Therefore, the present research is an attempt to identify the challenges affecting entrepreneurship among Iranian women. The results obtained from 30 semi-structured interviews with women entrepreneurs and women with entrepreneurial roles showed that sociocultural challenges faced by women entrepreneurs are classified into: “the society's perception of entrepreneurship among women,” “women's social security,” and “common family norms governing a society.”

This paper aims to identify and examine the internal and external factors that e-business communities in Iran grapple with within value proposition design.

Although the world and global economy have been vastly affected by the financial crisis and the competitive market, most businesses and trade lines are growing significantly by the power of online marketing and e-trades. However, this process is somehow different in the Iranian market. Using literature review and combining it with the casual-comparative method, this study first reviews the literature on the business model and value proposition design and then shows the main challenges Iranian entrepreneurs face in starting their e-business, especially at the time of severe economic, political sanction.

This paper attests to two categories of external and internal obstacles to entrepreneurs in the country. Some internal challenges point to obstacles and problems such as poor infrastructure in technology and network equipment, the security of personal data exchanges, improper infrastructure, including the speed of the internet and its bandwidth limit and lack of programming expertise. In the case of external barriers, this paper addresses the economic sanctions and restrictions that have been imposed on internet businesses.

In this study, the authors intend to identify the challenges of internet businesses in Iran and provide effective solutions for creating new value propositions resulting in rapid and sustainable economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of social and business context of developing counties (in this paper Iran) on developing, forming and exhibiting entrepreneurial innovative behaviour leading to entrepreneurship. The developed model illustrates the most important factors in forming such behaviour.

In this paper, networked grounded theory was used to develop a path model for entrepreneurial innovative behaviour antecedents based on Iranian entrepreneurial context.

This paper shows that in Iranian entrepreneurship context, innovation is sensitive to local conditions and levels of technological capabilities. Also, Iran’s situation brings another aspect of innovation in mind, innovative behaviour of individuals in forms of entrepreneurships to compensate the lack of technology in the firms.

Due to the research approach and the quality of grounded theory, data gathering tool and sampling process, the generalizability of this paper is limited or may be context oriented; the results of this research must be interpreted within its limitation and scope.

This paper is the first study trying to develop a model on entrepreneurial innovative behaviour in Iran which develops a model based on the realities of Iran rather than model based on developed countries with different basis and context.