Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Academic Start-Ups in Using Social Media

Abstract

Introduction: In Iran, during the past few years, start-up activities have been seriously pursued in the academic sector and recently it has been mixed with media technologies. Due to the nascent nature of this field, there are many challenges in the path of their growth and development, which require more research and more practical solutions to solve them. In this research, considering the importance of ethical issues in any profession, the main goal is to identify the ethical and legal challenges faced by academic entrepreneurs' start-ups in using social media. Material & Methods: The qualitative research method is based on classical data theory. The statistical population of the research is made up of university entrepreneurs who were selected using the purposeful sampling method and until reaching theoretical saturation, a sample of 12 people. The data collection tool was semi-structured interviews with 7 general questions. Data analysis was done in three stages of open, axial and theoretical coding. Results: Data analysis and coding led to the extraction of 34 concepts, 7 subcategories and finally 2 main categories from the integration and classification of concepts. Conclusion: Based on the proposed model, internal challenge (management issues, ethical relationship with customers, branding, professional ethics) and external challenge (unethical competition, technology infrastructure, policies, laws and regulations) were identified as the dimensions of ethical and legal challenges faced by university start-ups in using social media.

Keywords

• ethical challenges
• academic entrepreneurship
• start-up
• social media