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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing entrepreneurial intensity. More specifically the study addresses the following objectives: propose a way to measure entrepreneurial intensity within the community context in order to determine entrepreneurial activity over a period of ten years, detect the factors influencing the entrepreneurial intensity, and finally locate Kibbutz communities on the entrepreneurial grid.

Kibbutz communities are the level of analysis. Using a comprehensive questionnaire, a sample of 60 Kibbutzim – constituting 22 percent of the population of Kibbutz communities in Israel – was investigated over a period of ten years. The same questionnaire was administered to the same sample Kibbutzim (Kibbutzim is the plural of Kibbutz) in 1994, 1997 and 2004. Collected data include number and types of enterprises, economic strength, organizational size and age, and features of organizational structure and culture.

Quantitative data analysis revealed a significant increase of entrepreneurial activity of Kibbutz communities in terms of frequency, degree and intensity of entrepreneurship. Organizational size and age have an impact on entrepreneurial intensity as well as the existence of an “entrepreneurial vehicle.” On the entrepreneurial grid Kibbutzim are moving from the incremental/periodic cluster towards the dynamic cluster, but few meaningful breakthroughs can be observed.

More research is needed in order to understand the interrelationship between community environments and entrepreneurship. The major research limitation of this paper constitutes the fact that only Kibbutz communities were investigated.

The paper utilizes the concept of the entrepreneurial grid for an empirical analysis of community entrepreneurship.

This study aims to examine the changes in cooperative community and kibbutz industry that did not undergo privatization.

This research was based on the case study method, combined with ethnographic interviews and document analysis.

The findings showed that the industry was highly successful economically, enabling the management to strengthen its authority without sharing information. The decision-making process, thus, became authoritarian, while the community's democratic mechanism was only nominal. This change was also accomplished by cultural transition from cooperative toward more capitalistic values. Management preferred to hire professional workers from the outside without any preference for kibbutz members, causing ethical dilemmas for certain elderly kibbutz members, who felt that the factory had abandoned socialistic ideas.

This research was conducted only on one kibbutz industry; further research is recommended.

Management at cooperative organizations needs to realize that in a capitalistic environment, adaptation can cause the organization to lose its cooperative features. To prevent a cultural shift toward capitalistic values, managers need to be socialized and workers persuaded of the importance of cooperative values.

The study is innovative for its focus on loss of cooperative community and managerial style that has not been addressed sufficiently in the literature. This research sheds light on organizational conditions that can cause cooperative communities to lose their democratic and socialistic attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate entrepreneurial opportunities in changing communities via the development of a conceptual model, drawing on Hudson's concepts of places and spaces. It also aims to explore the scope and variety of entrepreneurial opportunities in Kibbutzim located within a conceptual model of four clusters based on availability of economic and social capital.

The sample for this study consists of 81 Kibbutzim representing 29 per cent of the Kibbutz population (277 Kibbutzim). Data were collected via official sources of the kibbutz movement and analyzed using Anova models comparing groups.

The findings reveal that both scope and variety of entrepreneurship vary within the four clusters of kibbutz communities and point to a positive influence of availability of economic and social community capital on entrepreneurial opportunities.

The paper presents the development of a conceptual model more sensitive to the heterogeneity of kibbutz communities than former dichotomous categorizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational change upon entrepreneurship in communities such as the Israeli kibbutz, which underwent during the last two decades a process of crisis and change. Based on a theoretical model that identifies how cultural orientations of individualism versus collectivism affect the entrepreneurial process, attempt is made to analyze whether and how the move from organizational collectivism towards organizational individualism influences the volume and type of entrepreneurship in community settings.

A comprehensive questionnaire has been administered to a sample of 60 kibbutzim in 1997 and in 2004. The questionnaire includes issues of organizational culture, structure and business orientation, as well as reports on the ventures initiated during the relevant years. The data received by means of the questionnaire are analyzed by quantitative statistical methods. In‐depth interviews with office holders in a small number of kibbutzim add understanding of the underlying ongoing processes of change.

The results of the study show that after processes of organizational change, resource leverage is still characterized by induced strategic behavior, but venture policy is no longer one of nurturing. Market criteria such as profitability and competition at the organizational level promote individualistic‐oriented motivation and economic behavior of entrepreneurs within the community setting.

Using a model of corporate entrepreneurship is the inherent limitation of the design of this study. Future research should consider alternative theoretical models for the analysis of entrepreneurship in community settings, focusing on independent variables such as human and social capital of the community entrepreneur.

The paper provides an investigation into the influence of organizational change upon the volume of entrepreneurship in a community setting.

This paper aims to develop a managerial style typology relevant to kibbutz industry analysis and applicable to all cooperative organizations.

This study applied qualitative methods to evaluate the organizational biographies of Factories five factories, using open interviews and document analysis.

The findings show that before privatization took place, these industries were managed according to socialistic democratic principles. Once they became global and capitalistic, some kibbutz industries adopted a business cooperative style that combines features of capitalism and socialism, while others underwent a crisis and opted for a stricter and more bureaucratic managerial style.

This research is based on five case studies; further research is recommended to establish the current typology.

This study shows very clearly that the cooperative business style can be offered for businesses previously operated according to socialistic principles.

This study augments current literature by elucidating the speed with which business activity is conducted according to cooperative principles. It presents a typology relevant to kibbutz industry and cooperative organizations alike, addressing the cooperative managerial, cooperative business and bureaucratic styles, enabling maintenance of normative management that adapts itself to global and capitalistic environments.

Despite the putative importance of ideological commitments in the evolution of large-scale cooperation among unrelated individuals, evolutionary researchers have yet to examine empirically the relationship between ideology and cooperation. We conduct an experimental game on Israeli kibbutz members to evaluate whether: (1) differences in ideological commitment can explain variation in cooperation within and across kibbutzim; and (2) whether certain types of ideologies are better at promoting cooperation than others. We use the cooperative behavior of Israeli city residents as a baseline and show that members of collectivized kibbutzim are more cooperative than city residents, while members of kibbutzim that have abandoned socialist ideology (privatized kibbutzim) are no more cooperative than city residents. Our results further indicate that among collectivized kibbutzim, members of religious kibbutzim are more cooperative than their secular counterparts. Religious males who engage in thrice-daily communal prayer display the highest levels of cooperation of any subpopulation in our sample. We discuss how the performance of sanctified rituals serves to internalize religious ideological commitment, thus enhancing the ability of religious ideology to motivate cooperative behavior.

This article analyzes a kibbutz factory and seeks to understand its unique hybrid structure following privatization, comparing it with that of other kibbutz industries in Israeli society.

The research used qualitative investigation, including interviews and document analysis practice.

The study describes hybrid model that is based on conflicting logic, as the kibbutz industry contains both communal and familial principles and bureaucratic and business features. This case study succeeded in striking a balance between the two conflicting logics through sound managerial policy adapted for the sake of communal interests.

This typology can be applied to other business organizations that underwent organizational changes as well.

The authors developed an alternative hybrid organization typology capable of describing new trends in kibbutz industry.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on a current trend in kibbutz industries, and to examine the numerous changes at Millennium Industries.

A case study was carried out documenting the organizational biography of Millennium Industries. Ethnographic interviews were held with kibbutz members employed by the organization, former CEO’s and with other workers.

The research describes the life cycle of the plant from its beginnings, through its maturity, its growth until its decline. It also explains the organizational failure of the plant, in terms of its background and the difficulties of managing a kibbutz industry in an era of global economy. The causes of its decline stem mainly from a kibbutz-style management based on non-professional involvement of the community in business, and incompatible with the rough competition of capitalistic markets. The plant was finally sold to a private investor, thereby losing its identity as a kibbutz plant.

As a single case-study this research cannot pretend to statistical generalization of the findings but linked to the kibbutz and the organizational literature, findings seem to allow generalization of theoretical propositions concerning evolution of the kibbutz industry (an analytic generalization according to Yin, 2013).

While the kibbutz society and its industry are involved in deep changes for the two last decades, very little research was made on kibbutz industry. This paper should contribute to actualize the social knowledge about these specific and interesting phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to study the loss of solidarity in three kibbutz factories as an outcome of the process of privatization in their kibbutz communities.

The research was a qualitative investigation, including interviews in three factories.

The research found high a sense of vertical and horizontal solidarity before the privatization. The solidarity stemmed from socialistic principles of the kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz) and their factories functioned as an extension of the kibbutz clan: close inter-personal relationships, a devotion to collective needs and democratic decision making in the kibbutz general assembly directly influencing the factories. After the privatization, the organizational solidarity decreased because of formal and procedural issues: the factory became hierarchical, work conditions deteriorated and the familiar spirit of the clan vanished.

There are more than 130 kibbutz factories, most of them in privatized kibbutzim. This paper presents only three of those factories, so it can only represent preliminary and partial findings. It is important to extend this research to examine other kibbutz factories.

The research suggests how factories, in kibbutzim and throughout the world, could respond to weak organizational solidarity: to increase trust and cooperation between management, to create flexible working conditions and to achieve higher productivity.

This is the first study to focus on kibbutz enterprises through the sociological lens of the solidarity theory. Previously, most post-privatization research has focussed on economic questions of profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a framework for the exploration of system transformation that includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.

A five‐phased longitudinal research of one organization – Kibbutz Shefayim– during 12 years: semi‐structured interviews (60‐120 minutes each) with Kibbutz members representing a wide range of views and experiences in 1993; collecting and reviewing of Kibbutz internal “raw” documents that related to changes that occurred during the past 12 years, and; follow‐up semi structured interviews in 1998, 2001 and 2005. The interviewed members were asked to describe the nature of the changes that had taken place since the previous interview, including reasons, mechanisms, results and impacts.

The findings suggest that leading system change requires managerial orientation that is centered on balancing acts embedded in on going dialogue and the design of learning mechanisms. The paper advances a specific set of balancing acts and discusses their implications for leading system wide transformation.

This research was conducted within one organization. Further longitudinal replications in other Kibbutz‐based systems are under way.

The proposed view of leadership as a balancing act seems to capture the experience of many managers in the twenty‐first century. The findings suggest that some of the critical success factors for system‐wide transformation centers on the leaders' ability to sustain the following activities: continuous effort at bringing the outside forces into alignment with the internal forces; utilizing triggering events as levers for continuous change, and the purposeful design and management of learning mechanisms.

Adds to the literature on the exploration of system transformation and includes leadership roles, contextual mess and triggering events, designing and managing sustainable learning mechanisms, managing a variety of balancing acts, creating shared understanding and, transforming shared understanding into action.