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A Study Of Relationship Among Enterprises' Organizational Learning, Enterpreneurial Orientation And Organizational Performance

Posted on:2008-08-26Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:D LiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119360242471020Subject:Management Science and Engineering
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
After the concept of organizational learning (OL) was firstly demonstrated by Argyris and Schon in 1970' s, Senge had focus on the study of the learning organization in 1990's. During these decades, the theory of organizational learning (OL) has developed rapidly and broadly, combining closely with corporates' practice. Especially with the rising research of the strategic management in the West during 1990's, many authors tend to relate OL to the corporate competitive advantage, and thus lead to a widespread concern. On addition, the springing up of knowledge management and knowledge economy has deepened the study of organizational learning itself, and show its great significance as well. The sufficient academic literatures state that OL has a close relationship with the organizational performance (OP). Organizational learning is recognized as an important strategic process and the key resource to create organizational competitive capability and advantage. It is also regarded as a crucial decisive factor for an organization to continuously adapt to the environment change, and to create the long-run surviving and developing capability. An organization with strong capability of learning is called the Learning Organization.How does the OL influence OP? And through which factors (variables)? Or which factor has greater influence on OP? These questions have been broadly and deeply discussed. However, there are fewer study which are concerned with the Chinese enterprises under the transitional social & economic situation, and they are not able to satisfy the need of the theory construction of OL of Chinese organizations and their practice.This study takes the Chinese enterprises under the turbulent situation of transitional economy as the sample, and aims to explore how Chinese companies deal with the organizational change and innovation, how they improve their capability to adapt to environment. The author also attempts to explore how these companies can promote sustainable entrepreneurship, and how they can even create their competitive advantages. From the resource-based view, this study discusses the integrated influence of OL and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on OP. It can provide guidelines for companies as to how to strengthen the organizational learning and the adaptability of entrepreneurial activities, so as to improve their OP.This study considers the capability of organizational learning as one of the valuable, hard-to-imitate, in favor of creating competitive advantage, and a long-term surviving capability, and therefore the organizational learning capability (OLC) is one of the most important resources for enterprises. The OL of the enterprise will influence its entrepreneurial thoughts and activities and as well as the OP. Therefore, there are 2 questions are put forward: (1) what is the influence of OL on EO? And what is the integrated influence of OL and EO on OP? (2) how does OL impact directly on OP if without the mediating variable of EO?The theoretical and empirical research methods are adopted in this study. Firstly, 17 hypotheses which includes the overall one and 16 sub-hypothesis are presented. Secondly, a Structural Equation Model (SEM) of OL-EO-OP is set up. Thirdly, 201 valid samples of Chinese enterprises are collected to test and prove these hypotheses through the SEM. This study has the following academic contributions on four sides:Firstly, based on the past studies of relationships of OL-OP, EO-OP and OL-CE, this study integrates the three concepts which are OL, EO and OP, seeing OL as the exogenous latent variable, EO and OP as the endogenous latent variables. Meanwhile, the EO is regarded as the mediating variable. It adopts the method of structural equation modeling (SEM) to discuss the relationship among these three main variables and the relationship among its inner dimensions. This study reveals that OL is able to promote the EO, while different sub-dimensions of OL has varied impact on sub-dimensions of EO. The integration of OL and EO has positive influence on the specific sub-dimensions of OP. However, the OL has negative influence on OP through the mediating factor of competitive aggressiveness of EO, and therefore this study proves the mediating effect of EO between the OL-OP.Secondly, this study proves that OL and its sub-dimensions have direct positive influence on OP without the mediating effect of EO, while other researchers tend to regard OL as a variable as whole rather than take it as a multi-dimentional one. Similarly, some authors tend to discuss one side of OP, such as innovative or financial performance. From a detailed multi-dimensional analysis perspective, this study is based on the three main variables of OL, EO and OP, developing the conceptual variables into the operative variables, and therefore reveals the different influence of each dimension of OL on OP, and proves the influence variation among these dimensions (factors).Thirdly, based on the scales on how to measure the OL and EO in and abroad, this study adjusts and redesigns the scale in terms of the enterprises in Chinese transitional society and economy, and it also proves its reliability and validity. Therefore the adjustment of scale is reasonable, and it can be effectively used to explain the features of OL and EO of Chinese enterprises. On addition, this study proves the independence of the four dimensions of EO which have not been totally proved by other researchers.Finally, this study reveals that the two dimensions of Openness and Experimentation and the Knowledge Transfer and Integration of OL are disadvantages of OLC of Chinese enterprises, reflecting the poor capability of team learning, and lack of the internal innovative organizational environment. Moreover, the the two dimensions of Pro-activeness and Risk-taking of EO have not prominently improved innovative performance of enterprises, which reduces the promotion of key factors of OL onto EO, and the integrated influenceof OL and EO on OP.
Keywords/Search Tags:Organizational Learning of Enterprises, Organizational Learning Capability, Enterpreneurial Orientation, Organizational Performance, Structural Equation Model
PDF Full Text Request
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