Study Of Entrepreneurial Learning Model Of Social Network Perspective

In face of the rapid changing in technology and the increasingly fierce competition,it is necessary for entrepreneurs to make full use of existing knowledge and continuously explore new technologies and skills to adapt to the changes in the business environment.Therefore,it is very important how to improve entrepreneurs' explorative learning and exploitive learning.On the individual,explorative learning and exploitive learning are two exclusive modes of learning(Gupta & Smith,2006).Literatures investigated roles of explorative learning and exploitive learning in entrepreneurs' experiential learning (Politis & Gabrielsson,2005),but failed to point out that how to balance these two modes.Moreover,this literatures treat entrepreneurs as "intellectual Robinson Crusoe"(Pavlica,et al,1998),and the impact of social interaction on entrepreneurs' learning has been ignored.In fact,network learning is one of the important ways to enhance entrepreneurial competencies.To address above issues,the paper focus on the following four topics:â‘ what kind of relationship are there between social networks and entrepreneurs' learning modes?â‘¡Whether there are alternative or complementary relationships between dimensions of network?â‘¢Corresponding to the competitive views of the network (such as Burt's structure hole theory and Coleman's social capital theory),if there are positive relationships between network variables and explorative learning and exploitive learning? If so,this means that entrepreneurs can balance explorative learning and exploitive learning by constructing different networks;â‘£What kind of relationships are there between social network,learning modes and opportunity recognition(Politics,2005)? In order to cope with these issues,a series of theoretical and empirical studies are performed.Based on the literatures and theory analysis,the paper put forward 17 research hypotheses.In questionnaires,the paper use "name generators" to measure network variables and applies social network analysis software UCINET6.0 to calculate the value of structural hole of each sample.Finally,through employing the statistical tool SPSS15.0 and multiple regression analysis(hierarchial enter) to examine all hypotheses.The conclusions are sum up as follow:(1)According to Hoang&Antoncic(2003),there are three elements in analysis of entrepreneurs' social network,namely,network structure,network governance and network content,corresponding,the paper examines respectively the relations between structure holes(constraint),weak(strong) ties,trust,education heterogeneity(homogeneity),dissimilarities(similarities) between entrepreneur and "alters" in his/her network and learning modes.The results show that:there are significant positive correlations between structural holes,education heterogeneity, knowledge dissimilarities and explorative learning,and there are also significant positive correlations between strong ties,trust,education homogeneity,knowledge similar and exploitative learning.That is to say,the competitive views of network show their reasonableness through their effects on explorative(exploitive) learning. This means that entrepreneurs can balance explorative learning and exploitive learning by constructing different networks.Especially,the paper pays attention to the problem of over-trust.Over-trust is not considered conducive to innovative and explorative learning(Zahra,et al,2006), therefore,the paper predicts that trust has an inverted U-shaped relationship to explorative learning.The results show that:the coefficient for the trust is positive, whereas the coefficient for trust is negative,but they are not significant.However,this reminds us that the role of trust is not always positive.(2)This paper investigates the relationship between the network dimensions by two ways:First,by the progressive introduction of a network variable to regression model,if the significance of a previous variable fates after the introduction of new variable,this means that new variable is a complete surrogate for previous variable, but,such relationships between variables are found,this result confirms the view of Seibert,et al(2001) that the different dimensions of the network can play a role together.Second,through the interaction between network variables,we can determine whether or not there are complementary relationships between dimensions of network.The paper find:the interaction of structural hole and education heterogeneity has an significant positive relationship to explorative learning,at the same time,the significance of structure hole fades and education heterogeneity of significant remains robust,which indicating that the effects of structure hole may be dependent on education heterogeneity;No significance relationship exists among other dimension.(3)The paper examines relationship between network variables, explorative(exploitive)learning and opportunity recognition.We find:only education heterogeneity(homogeneous) has significant positive(negative) relationship to opportunity recognition;Explorative learning not only has significant positive relationship to opportunity recognition,but also is full mediator between the relationship of education heterogeneity and opportunity recognition;But,no significance is found between exploitive learning and opportunity recognition.In addition,two other important related issues are discussed:(4) The first is the effect of entrepreneurs' cognitive style.Entrepreneurs' cognitive style impact entrepreneurs' learning(Ulrich & Cole,1987;Man,2006),this paper finds:Innovative cognitive style has significant positive relationship to explorative learning and adaptive cognitive style has significant negative relationship to exploitive learning;When with high innovative cognitive style,the number of structure holes does not affect entrepreneurs' explorative learning,when with high adaptive cognitive style,the extent of knowledge similarity has no significant impact on exploitive learning.(5) The second are the effects individual characteristics of entrepreneurs and characteristics of firms.Regression analysis shows that:â‘ Female entrepreneurs, older entrepreneurs,entrepreneurs with a certain experience in similar industries preferences exploitive learning;â‘¡Entrepreneurs in private firms,foreign-funded firms and joint ventures preferences explorative learning;â‘¢Entrepreneurs under the age of 25,entrepreneurs with fewer entrepreneurial experience have low capabilities of opportunities recognition,and entrepreneurs in high-tech firms can recognize more opportunities than entrepreneurs in other industries.Finally,the paper summarizes the main conclusions,point out the theoretical progresses,and put forward some guides for practice,and discusses the limitations and future direction.