Entrepreneurial Atmosphere And Its Impact On Entrepreneurial Performance Mechanism

Entrepreneurship is represented by a firm's risk-taking propensity, tendency to act in competitively aggressive, proactive manners, and reliance on frequent and extensive product innovation. Corporate entrepreneurship is figured out as an organizational-level entrepreneurial phenomenon among larger, established firms. As the business environment becomes more and more dynamic in the 21st century, more and more enterprises have realized the importance of corporate entrepreneurship in seeking and strengthening competencies in the complexity of competitive environment, and put more effort on it. However, some enterprises failed in corporate entrepreneurship, and even failed in surviving.Researches pointed out that successful corporate entreprneurship not only relied on capital investment, but also relied on entrepreneurial climate which could motivate employees' innovation enthusiasm and risk-taking willness(Li Zhineng et al., 2000). What is this type of climate like? What are the differences of the climate as enterprises' on different growth stage? What is its effect on corporate entreprneurship? Sloving these problems may be helpful to promote corporate entrepreneurship and organizational effectiveness.Given the scope and magnitude of the benefits conferred by the cognitive perspective in other field, it seems reasonable to suggest that it might provide similar benefits for entrepreneurship research, but there is little study on corporate enterprneurship process form social cognitive pespective. Social learning theory focuses on the interaction among behavior, cognition and environment (Bandura & Cervone, 1986), therefore exploring corporate entrepreneurship in this view may be useful to study the relationship among organizational internal environment, employees' behaviors and organizational effectiveness. Moreover, it may be useful to outline the theory model of corporate entrepreneurship process and rich social cognitive theory.Organizational entrepreneurial climate(OEC) is the coupling concept of organization climate and corporate entrepreneuship. Based on literature review, this paper attempts to research OEC from social cognitive perspective, figure and test OEC concept and effect model. This attemptment is realized by four sub-studies.Study 1 is to construct the key concept, OEC, by means of depth-interview. Based on literature review, the researcher conducted depth-interview to 18 senior managers from 16 enterprises on the meaning of OEC and its impact on corporate entrepreneurship. The interview course is recorded by text, and then the text is coded and analyzed by content analysis technique. The result shows the OEC is the typical characteristic of an innovative or creative organization, and it is the employees' overall perception about enterprises' innovativeness and creativeness. The perception would have influence on employees' attitude and behavior towards innovation and risk-taking, furthermore it would affect entrepreneurial effectiveness of the organization. The result also indicates that the OEC is a multi-dimensional construct and is comprised of organizational support, autonomy, external-orientation, trust and interaction, and innovation motivation.Study 2 focuses on verifying the construct of the OEC and differentiating the OEC on four growth stages. Firstly, the study developes measurement tool of the OEC, after experts repeatedly discussing and revising. EFA(Exploratory Factor Analysis) and CFA(Confirmatory factor analysis) findings provide reliable evidence for the content and construct validity of the concept of OEC, and reliability of its measurement. Secondly, the study analyzes the differenece of the OEC on diffent growth stage by ANOVA(Analysis of Variance). The results show that the OEC exhibits external-spontaneous, support-spontaneous, support-induced and encourage-induced model successively as an enterprise's growth.On the basis of the OEC construct and diffences analysis, Study 3 explores the OEC's impact on entrepreneurial organizational efficacy. After proposing and verifying the concept construct of entrepreneurial organizational efficacy, Study 3 analyzes the OEC's effect on entrepreneurial organizational efficacy, and verifies environment uncertainty acting as a moderator in the relationship of OEC and entrepreneurial efficacy. In addition, Study 3 examines OEC's differenet effects on entrepreneurial efficacy on different growth stage. Entreprneurial efficacy has been confirmed to be as motivation to entrepreneurship and have significant connection with entreprneurship effectiveness, so Study 3 is a prepareation for investigating into the relationship between OEC and entrepreneurial performance.Study 4 constructs and tests the model of OEC's impact on entrepreneurial performance, which is based on social learning theory. SEM(Structure Equation Model) is applied to analyze this model. The findings indicate that OEM has direct effect on entrepreneurial performance, and has different effect on its two dimensions respectively. OEC also has indirect effect on entrepreneurial performance through entrepreneurial organizational efficacy, that is, entrepreneurial organizational efficacy acts as mediator in the relationship between OEC and entrepreneurial organizational efficacy. The study riches the theoretical meaning of the interaction model of cognition, behavior and environement, and provides useful view in exploring entrepreneurial cognition and OEC.Proposition and verification of OEC construct lays a foundation for studying its effect mechanism, and makes it possible to explore the relationship between OEC and entrepreneurial performance. Differences analysis of OEC as an enterprise's growth is an attempt of studying OEC vertically, while the exploration of OEC effect mechanism is an attempt of studying OEC horizontally, and therefore it would come up with a stereo framework. Based on an interaction model adapted from social learning theory, this paper points out and tests the effect of OEC on entrepreneurial organizational efficacy and entrepreneurial performance. In summary, the theoretical and empirical results of the paper have some theoretical importance and practical implication, and the paper provides a feasible new perspective for the corporate entrepreneurship research.