Theoretical And Empirical Research On The International Entrepreneurship Of Automotive Industry

The world economy is changing fundamentally. The economic development of all countries in the world becomes increasingly open. Trade and investment become freer. The economic globalization and the market integration impel enterprises to expand their business in global range. International entrepreneurship has already become the significant driving force of economy development and international competence of enterprises. Automobile industry has become an international industry first of all industries in the world since 1970s on the basis of technology revolution and the increasing global market. The world auto giants focused on global development strategy, international production integration net had already formed, and focuses were all moved abroad. The process of globalization has become remarkably fast and foreign auto enterprises have all accelerated their international entrepreneurship since 1990s. Every large auto group takes entrepreneurial actions to expend overseas and make use of international resources for getting better economic profits, reducing cost and improving competitive ability. Chinese automotive enterprises have also entered the international market actively to conduct international entrepreneurship.During the entrepreneurship process, entrepreneurial opportunities, enterprise organizational factors and international environment play important roles and decide the entrepreneurial performance of auto enterprises.Entrepreneurial opportunities, the core of entrepreneurial study, are the possibility to cater the markets'demands and pass values by combining resources creatively. International entrepreneurship is to discover, evaluate, and utilize opportunities across the countries to create products and service. Evaluation of entrepreneurship opportunities includes the following indicators: industry and market, economy, competitive advantage.Organizational factors related to international entrepreneurship mainly are: top management team (TMT) and enterprise resource. The effective leadership of TMT is the key point of the entrepreneurship success. Existing enterprises with suitable scale have the most potential force to hold the leading entrepreneurial position mainly because that they have the management abilities and have already founded and formed appropriate management teams to realize new businesses with high innovation and risk-taking ability. TMT includes execution promise and emotion promise. Resources are the assets, abilities, organization process, company characters, information and knowledge that a company control to make the company cognitive and execute strategies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness. In fact, entrepreneurship is the process to input resources constantly in order to supply products and service continuously.International environment is an important factor that international entrepreneurial enterprises must consider when taking all kinds of innovation actions. Stable and predictable environment influences the effectiveness of enterprise strategy decision straightly, in turn affect the operation. The dimensions of entrepreneurial environment include dynamic, hostility and heterogeneity.International entrepreneurial orientation is to start from the process of strategic decision and describing a number of important characteristics of the company in the process of international entrepreneurship. In the study of international entrepreneurial orientation, it contains innovation, risk-taking and proactiveness.International entrepreneurial performance is a kind of measure to the extent of international entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial performance has multi-dimensional structure. It includes not only traditional accounting indicators such as sales growth, market share, profitability but also growth performance indicators which reflect the nature of entrepreneurial activities better.International entrepreneurial orientation is related to international entrepreneurial opportunities, organizational factors and international environment. Based on previous research results and the analysis of author, these factors can be divided into the following dimensions. International entrepreneurial opportunity consists of industry and market, economy and competitive advantage. Organizational factors consist of two dimensions: top management team and enterprise resources.International environment consists of three dimensions: dynamic, hostility and heterogeneity. The international entrepreneurial orientation consists of three dimensions: innovation, risk-taking and proactiveness. International entrepreneurial performance consists of two dimensions: financial performance and non-financial performance. After reviewing the related theory as well as predecessors research results, the author raises international entrepreneurial factors—international entrepreneurial orientation—entrepreneurial performance model. International entrepreneurial opportunities, organizational factors and international environment are the variables, international entrepreneurial orientation is intermediate variable and international entrepreneurial performance is dependent variable. This dissertation puts forward the twenty-seven hypotheses of relationship among each element in this theory model basing on the theory deduction. It is concerned with empirical research, which validates the theory model and relevant hypothesis with AMOS software basing on the measurement of each variable. The author sent the "Automobile Industry International Entrepreneurship Questionnaire" to more than 10 national major automobile enterprises and then gave empirical analysis of research data. The results show that 22 of 27 hypotheses are supported and 5 ones don't gain supports. The author discussed the test results. The verified hypothesis could reveal the operational relationship among each elements, and there are specific reasons of enterprises development for these hypothesis proved to be wrong.Based on the international entrepreneurial model, combining with specific international entrepreneurial activities, the author researches the case of Toyota Motor Corporation and Chery Automobile Company and analyzes entrepreneurial elements—international entrepreneurial opportunities, enterprise organizations factors and the international environment of auto companies deeply. By the analysis on Toyota Motor and Chery Group case, it is revealed that the international entrepreneurial opportunities, organizations factors and international environmental elements promote the entrepreneurial performance through the driving function of international entrepreneurial orientation. It provides practical basis for this dissertation.The main conclusions of the study are as follow: industry and market are related positively with innovation dimension; industry and market are related positively with risk-taking dimension; industry and market are related positively with proactiveness dimension; economy is related positively with innovation dimension; economy is related positively with risk-taking dimension; economy is related positively with proactiveness dimension; competitive advantage is related positively with innovation dimension; competitive advantage is related positively with risk-taking dimension; competitive advantage is related positively with proactiveness dimension; top management team is related positively with innovation dimension; top management team is related positively with risk-taking dimension; top management team is related positively with proactiveness dimension; enterprise resources are related positively with innovation dimension; enterprise resources are related positively with risk-taking dimension; enterprise resources are related positively with proactiveness dimension; international environmental dynamic is related positively with innovation dimension; international environmental dynamic is related positively with proactiveness dimension; international environmental hostility is related positively with innovation dimension; international environmental heterogeneity is related positively with innovation dimension; international environmental heterogeneity is related positively with proactiveness dimension; innovation is related positively with international entrepreneurial performance; risk-taking is related positively with international entrepreneurial performance.