دنیا وکیلی

Despite the complexity and ambiguity in the concept of entrepreneurship, the expectations of governments, policymakers and education stakeholders have led to increased pressure on schools to develop entrepreneurship and financial independence. Very little research has been done on entrepreneurial leadership in schools. Therefore, this general question was raised, what is the relationship between entrepreneurship and school leadership? Focusing on the transcendental phenomenology approach of Moustakas, the present research tried to count the lived experiences of 19 school principals who were selected purposefully and using the criterion sampling technique. A three-step sequential phenomenological interview protocol was used. The analysis and coding of the interviews were done using the three-stage thematic analysis method (basic, organizing and global) and drawing the theme networks, and Maxqda2020 software was used for data management. At the end of the thematic analysis, a total of 90 basic themes, 34 organizing themes and finally 8 global themes were counted, which were: acquisition entrepreneurship, financial efficiency, financial literacy, educational entrepreneurship, social activism, school cultural ambassador, organizational entrepreneurship, and independent entrepreneurship. The experiences of the participants indicated that the leaders adopted two main strategies to implement entrepreneurial leadership in the school: first, policies to advance school affairs, communicate with parents and teachers, provide diverse and extracurricular courses for students, prioritize assignments and promoting flexibility in the teaching-learning process, these were intra-school solutions. On the other hand, school entrepreneurial leaders used external strategies such as public visits to the school, taking risks, promoting collaborative work, and gaining power for the school