Entrepreneurial Foreign-funded Enterprises Executive Team Leadership Model And Performance Mechanisms

Foreign enterprises are the radical impetus to China's economy in the past 20 years. Foreign Venturing has been playing an increasingly important role in industrial growth, technological progress and business development in China, from which more and more international enterprises have changed their business models from trading to entrepreneurial investment or have expanded aggressively, resulting in impetuosity of competition to survive and for profit. From the Upper Echelon Theory point of view we understand to improve the effectiveness of TMT before we are able to enhance the organizational performance. But most relevant literatures are the demographics-based TMT researches without theoretical explanation of functioning processes that remain in a Black Box. Thus, this paper is organized in four empirical sub-studies to reveal the Efficacy Machenism of IE TMT with key factors of Composition and Leadership Modes, Moderating and Intervening Variables, and its effects on Firm Performance upon Leadership, IE management and Cross-cultrual TMT research.In Study I, we analysed the Key structural Factors of IE TMT in selected twenty internationally entrepreneurial foreign enterprises via semi-structured interview with middle and top managers. The results showed that 1, international experience, elite education, cultural background, functional background and tenure are the applied demographics; 2, the combinations of the applied demographics are limited and typical; 3, IE TMT applied cross-cultural endorsed and entrepreneurial oriented leadership modes; and 4, resting with IE TMT composition modes, IE TMT leadership modes had direct effect on entrepreneurial performance, while its effective results ware influenced by intervened and moderated variables during the integrated process.In Study II, the key structural factors and their compositions of IE TMT were defined and validated through statistical analysis on 203 valid questionnaires developed upon relevant literatures and interview data, and revised under team level and international entreprenership, from the middle and top level managers in forty internationally entrepreneurial foreign enterprises. The results showed that 1, there are three effective compositions of IE TMT in internationally entrepreneurial foreign enterprises described as Intellectual in Cultural Homogeneity, Intellectual in Cultural Heterogeneity, and Experiential in Cultural Homogeneity combinations; 2, IE TMT integrally applied three leadership modes in terms of transactional leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, and transformational leadership; 3, different IE TMT compositions should match certain leadership modes; and 4, the two key environment variables had momentous impact on the IE TMT composition modes.In Study III, the effectiveness evolvement of IE TMT leadership modes in three different entrepreneurial phases were investigated, with the questionnaire validated in study II, and the mature scale of international environment hostility and scale of international knowledge transferring used in the previous studies. By means of the quasi-experimentation design for field settings, three clusters of internationally entrepreneurial firms in growing stage, expanding stage, and mature stage from forty internationally entrepreneurial foreign firms were randomly selected in 195 valid questionnaires. Multivariate analysis of covariance was conducted while factors of international environment hostility and international knowledge transfer were under control. The results indicated that 1, the functioning intensity of transformational leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, and transactional leadership modes had significant difference; and 2, the transactional leadership mode was at highest level in growing stage of International Entrepreneurship, but was at lowest level in mature stage; the entrepreneurial leadership mode was at highest level in expanding stage, but was at lowest level in mature stage; the transformational leadership mode was at highest level in mature stage, but was at lowest level in growing stage.In Study IV, as the efficacy mechanism of IE TMT Leadership Modes, the association between IE TMT and entrepreneurial performance was systematically investigated, and the operational mechanism of TMT structure was validated through statistical analyisis with 235 valid questionnaires collected from fifty international entrepreneurial foreign enterprises, based on the above-developed results and the relevant theories. The study results indicated that 1, TMT leadership modes had a positive correlation with entrepreneurial management and growing performance; 2, the impact of different leadership mode had no significant difference on growing performance, but had significant difference on management performance; 3, task invironment had moderated the effect of TMT leadership modes on entrepreneurial performance; 4, organizational context moderated the effect of TMT leadership modes on entrepreneurial performance; 5, team cohesion intervened the impact of TMT on entrepreneurial management performance; 6, innovative executive ability intervened the impact of TMT on entrepreneurial growing performance; and 7, team cohesion was at highest level in Transformational TMT, and was at mid level in Transactional TMT while at lowest level in Entrepreneurial TMT, and innovative executive ability had no significant difference among three applied IE TMT Leadership Modes.Finally, the major conclusions of this dissertation were integrally summarized, from which the theoretical progresses and practical implications were discussed, while the limitations and suggestions for future studies had been put forward.