Research On The Effect Of Entrepreneurial Environment, Resource Integration Capability And Process On The Performance Of New Venture

Entrepreneurial research serves entrepreneurial practice. According to GEM report, countries in differnet developing stages own different laws of entrepreneurship, which is related to the conditions and environment of countries. At present china is in the transitional stage with hypo-uncertain condition and environment. With the change of the market, organizational survival is becoming more and more difficult, and it can be gained through organizational learning. The forms are that more carefulness is devoted to the market, organization owns more forms and the policies are more changeable(Peng&Heath,2000). Transitional economy creates more entrepreneurial opportunity while facing more resources constraints. GEM(2006)Chinese reported that, in 2005, the failing rate of enterprises is 5.18% in China, which is the same as GEM average level of 1.9 times Comparing with developed countries, the entrepreneurial researches lagged behind the development of practice. But the previous theories abroad are difficult to be used in directing our entrepreneurial practice. So, our research is conducted based on Chinese environment to feature the special characteristics in China.There are many differences between our new venture and foreign one in the fields of entrepreneurial environment and the backgound. GEM found that China is in the transition stage fron necessity-driven entrepreneurship to opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. While special laws come from special environment, it is a key question whether resource integration model from developed countries is applicable to our special condition. At present the new ventures in China are facing resource constraint and entrepreneurs have many difficulties in acquiring necessary resources. Compared with mature entreprises, new ventures face more complex resource integration process. Under this circumstance, new venture should adapt to new environment to integrate resources and improve the performance. But more firms don't acquire their given goals because of the ambiguous resource integration process and cannot find the problems in this process. Then what is the relation between resource integration process and performance? How to integrate resources to improve performance? What is the influence of resource integration capability on resource integration process? What is the role played by environment in resource integration process? What are the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship? All the questions have been discussed by the scholars but their focus is on deduction, seldom on the overall aspect of the relation between environmental uncertainty, resource integration capability, process and performance.The above are related to the success of resource integration process and are also important questions to be tested. This paper uses empirical study to test the following five aspects:(1)define resource integration via process and set up the model of resource integration process and developthe measurements of resource integration capability.Resource constraint is the major problem faced by Chinese firms. Resource integration process is the basis of the paper. So, this paper regards resource integration process as the crucial step to resolve all problems. Resource integration process is seldom discussed in present literatures. So in-depth research is needed. This paper uses the opinions of Brush,Greene,Hart(2001)and Simon,Hitt&Ireland(2007) to build the model of resource integration process and divide it into four steps: Resources identification, Resources acquisition, Resources allocation and Resource leverage. And their measures are developed via the view of Churchill. After collecting data twice, this paper uses EFA and CFA to develop overall measures of resource integration process.(2)the influence of resource integration process of new venture on performance and compare the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.The second point is to test the influence of resource integration process of new venture on performance. In other papers authors paid attention to the effects of single process on performance and lack major link to combine all the factors. Resource integration process is divided into four steps: Resources identification, Resources acquisition, Resources allocation and Resource leverage and integrate them together to test the relations between them and performance. The result shows that a significant relation exists between resources acquisition, resources allocation and performance, while insignificant between resources identification, resource leverage and performance. And the differences exist between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. For the former, Resources identification has effect on performance, while for the latter; Resources acquisition has effect on performance.(3)the effect of resource integration capability on resource integration process and compare the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.New venture should form special capability in the development via environment to integrate resources. The third point is to test the effect of resource integration capability on resource integration process. In previous studies, seldom papers studied the effect of resource integration capability on resource integration process. The result shows that resource integration capability has explicit relation with resource identification and allocation. Resource integration capability has no direct relation with resource acquisition and leverage. Meanwhile, as for necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, resource integration capability has more effect on process in the former than in the latter.(4)the effect of environmental uncertainty on resource integration process and compare the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.Resource constraint exists for new venture. It is hard for new ventures if they overdo the resource integration. Firms should combine resource via environment. The basic motives for resource integration are environmental constraints and challenges. The fourth part is to test the effect of environmental uncertainty on resource integration process and compare the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. The results show that complexity and dynamics are related to resource identification, acquisition and leverage. But munificance has no direct effect on them. And the results support our hypotheses. New venture should combine the resources via environment. And we found that as for necessity-driven entrepreneurship, complexity and dynamics are related to resource leverage. And this shows that it is more inportant to impact resource identification in necessity-driven entrepreneurship than in opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.(5)the effect of environmental uncertainty on resource integration capability and compare the differences between necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.Resource integration capability can form competitive advantage only if it can combine with environment. Firms operate in special environment and the trait of resource allocation is the link between firms and the environment. The other task is to test the effect of environmental uncertainty on resource integration capability. And the results show that environmental dynamics has significant and positive effect on resource integration capability while complexity and munificance has no relation with it. As for necessity-driven entrepreneurship and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, resource integration capability is impacted by munificance in the latter while in the former resource integration capability is not impacted by uncertianty.