The Mediating Role of Blended Learning Infrastructures in the Relationship Between Good Governance, Social Capital and General Attitude Toward Business Environment

Abstract

Background: Personality traits and the perception of chief background factors, are largely influenced by educational systems. Therefore, the present study believes that a collective understanding of a particular context leads to the creation of a culture that forms the basis of entrepreneurial activities. Objectives: Examining the mediating role of blended learning infrastructures in the relationships between social capital, good governance and the general perception of business environment among the owners of small and medium sized enterprises in Fars province, Iran. Methods: This is an applied research, and in terms of data collection it is a descriptive-correlation analysis of variance based on path analysis. For data gathering, stratified sampling was applied to select 366 samples among 3887 active small and medium-sized enterprises in Fars province. Results: Good governance has a direct effect (P=0.736, sig.<0.001) as well as an indirect effect (P=0.059, sig.<0.001) on the perceived business environment through the blended learning infrastructures. Also, the direct effect of social capital on the perceived business environment (P=0.041, sig.=0.315) was not confirmed, but its indirect effect through blended learning infrastructures was confirmed (P=0.305, sig.=0.03). Conclusions: Before reinforcing the blended learning infrastructures, one needs to initially strengthen the macro political and economic factors, followed by social, cultural and educational factors, in order to improve the perceived business environment and create a positive attitude towards this atmosphere. This is due to the fact that governmental infrastructures are not yet as developed as much as the educational infrastructures for developing entrepreneurship.