New Ventures Organizational Learning And Entrepreneurial Performance

Since China adopted reform and open-to-the-outside world policy,with the porpelment for the market economy,more and more people participate in entrepreneurial practice.Prosperous entrepreneurship has fostered many new ventures, and they not only supplies added employments,but also promotes enterprise innovation and creates more social value,which plays an important role in enhancing national and regional economy development.However many new ventures failed contrary to their social and economic value.So we need abstract those successful new ventures' experience for guiding entrepreneurial practice.So long ago more and more researchers have realized the importance of organizational learning for entrepreneurship,especially after some researchers drew attention from entrepreneur's personatity and began to focus on the process of entrepreneurship.As entrepreneurial behavior and process,new venture organizational learning gradually become an important topic in the field of entrepreneurship research,but existing organizational learning theories tend to analyze those established enterprises and aren't with an eye to new ventures' industrial and develop process background,for which reasons we cannot get reasonable and entire explain when we directly apply existing organizational learning theories to the field of new venture's organizational learning. As a whole,if we can create a theoretical framework of new venture organizational learning based on existing organizational learning theories,it will be of great academic and practical significance.In China most entrepreneurial practice takes place in service industry with the prosperous entrepreneurship.So this dissertation chose organizational learning of new venture in service industry as the research topic.On the base of tracing back to the train of thought of research,we chose the methodology of Total Systems Intervention(TSI) as the meta methodology in this dissertation.Form the point of view of ontology theory,and based on western classical theory,surrounding the core topic of new venture organizational learning integrated quantitative and qualitative methods,with a view to the characters of Chinese new ventures,this dissertation studied the structure of dimension,learning contents,facilitating factors of new venture organizational learning and its influence on entrepreneurial performance of new venture,in order to explore four key theoretical questions:how does new venture learn,what kinds of knowledge does new venture learn,what are the facilitating factors of new venture organizational learning, what is the relationship between new venture organizational learning and its entrepreneurial performance.To answer these four questions,we conducted four studies.They are as follows:Study 1:In order to explore the elements and contents of new venture organizational learning,we used semi-construct interview method to interview 17 entrepreneur and managers in 14 new ventures to explore the key events of the organizational learning of new venture.Then we used content analysis technique to analysis the text of interviews,and abstracted six elements of new venture organizational learning,including experimenting,absorbtive acquisition,critical events-driven learning,,entrepreneur's forward learning,knowledge storing and knowledge application,At the same time,we defined the six elements respectively based on analyzing the text of interview cases.Furthermore,by analyzing the key events adduced by the interviewees,we found that Chinese new ventures in the service industry mainly learn how to establish brand and construct corporate identity, how to explore the business notion,how to develop and upgrade those knowledge related to corporate business activities such as produce,servicing and management, how to improve market capability,how to acquire those knowledge of corporate institution and culture.Study 2:Form the point of view of ontology theory,integrated the process school of organizational learning research and the research of organizational learning orientation,we brought up our new venture organizational learning mode and integrate the six elements of new venture organizational learning into the mode. Taking the results of interviews into account,drawing lessons from accepted questionnaire of organizational learning,we tailored the measurement of this study. We used 171 qualified samples from 52 new ventures for exploratory factor analysis,and 259 qualified samples from 91 different new ventures for confirmatory factor analysis.The result showed that new venture organizational learning include six kinds of elements,among which there are two different types of learning in new venture:explorative learning and exploitative learning.Explorative learning is featured as experimenting,absorbtive acquisition,critical events-driven learning and entrepreneur's forward learning;while exploitative learning is featured as knowledge storing and knowledge application.This result also conforms to March's March's two types of organizational learning.Study 3:On the base of investigation,interview and case study,we divided the facilitating factors of organizational learning into four categories:factors at the level of individual,factors at the level of organizational team,factors at the organizational top level such as entrepreneur and top managers and factors from the perspective of organizational institution and culture.We analyzed the questionnaire and conducted factor analysis,and abstracted five factors of the facilitating factors of new venture organizational learning:learning leading,common development,respecting personality and organizational supporting.The positive research of the relationship between facilitating factors of organizational learning and factors of organizational learning showed that the five facilitating factors of organizational learning are moderately relative to almost every factors of organizational learning,which new venture will be more willing to learning when the facilitating factors of organizational learning are at a high level.Study 4:We use organizational learning case study and survey methods to explore on the influence of organizational learning on new venture's entrepreneurial performance.Our study proved that explorative learning and exploitative learning do have impact on new venture's entrepreneurial performance.We also tested the moderate effect of environment factors by using regression analysis,and got the result that:organizational learning will have different influence on new venture's entrepreneurial performance under different environment.We examined the moderating effect of environment factors on the relationship between new venture organizational learning and entrepreneurial performance.The results showed that the moderating erect of demand uncertainty and competitive intensity both are supported. Our further research found that demand uncertainty and competitive intensity moderated the relationship between organizational learning and the profitability and growth of entrepreneurial performance,but they did not moderate the sustainability of entrepreneurial performance.So we deduced that:if new ventures wants to improve organizational performance by organizational learning,they must dynamically match their learning pattern with the environment.Through above studies,we found some characters of new venture organizational learning:on learning modes,entrepreneur's forward learning is a very important part of new venture organizational learning,and driving learning by critical and unexpected events is common in new ventures;on learning contents,besides continuing entrepreneurial learning,new ventures,especially those who have come through early growth stage,learn how to develop core business to a great extent, which are similar to traditional business management;on facilitating factors for organizational learning,if new ventures can offer the advantage of learning leading, common development,respecting personality and organizational supporting. organizational learning will arises more easily in the institution.We believe that our findings will instruct the managerial practice of new venture organizational learning.Based on the ontology theory,and under the guidance of meta methodology of TSI,This research studied the structure,content,internal facilitating factors,and consequences of organizational learning of new ventures,from the view of dynamic fit between organizational learning and internal and external environment.The role of New venture as a whole and the key effect of entrepreneur during the learning process were emphasized.