Investigation of the Role of Structural, Leadership, and Strategy Factors in Cooperatives Entrepreneurship

There are more than one million agricultural cooperatives members in Iran. In the meantime, the rapid development of the animal husbandry in Iran has forced cooperatives to meet the members' scientific and practical needs for completing production cycle of the dairy industry. Livestock production covers a wide spectrum of livestock activities including bee keeping, silkworm raising, and aquaculture, indicating widespread business systems in Iranian animal husbandry. Due to significant livestock population, various animal products, such as raw milk, red meat, white meat ( chicken and fish), eggs, and honey are produced. Thus, the mentioned cooperatives need to meet the markets demands for keeping competitive advantage more than any time before. Only when innovation is fostered, market competitive advantage can be maintained. Today, sustainability and innovation issues have a great importance in some organizations such as agriculture cooperatives. The term "entrepreneurship" is coined to describe this need to keep organizations in competitive situation by innovations tools. Presently, it is believed that entrepreneurship can be developed. Organizational, personal, and environmental aspects are important factors toward entrepreneurship fostering. This study took into consideration three factors in cooperatives, including structure, strategy, and leadership. The results of research revealed that these three variables play important role in entrepreneurship development in cooperatives. Thus, consideration of these aspects can help in development and boost cooperatives profits. The result of modeling by structural equations methods showed that 38% of the variance of entrepreneurship as a dependent variable could be explained by these three factors in cooperatives.