Entrepreneurial Spirit Of The Structure And Effector Mechanisms: The Match With The Entrepreneurial Perspective

Entrepreneurship is the key form of human capital and an endogenous motivity of economic growth and societal development. This paper combined a structuration view and a process perspective to define entrepreneurship as a process through which entrepreneurs interact dynamically with ecology to seek for sustained development by innovative activities. By reviewing the entrepreneurship literature from 4 aspects of entrepreneurial traits, individual and organizational entrepreneurial behavior, entrepreneurial competency and resources, and personal differences of entrepreneurs, it was found that what is entrepreneurship maintained unanswered with a number of research evidences but without even one agreed conclusion, and that the entrepreneurship fited with entrepreneurial activities is a basic theme longing for investigation.With the Person-Entrepreneurship Fit perspective as a theoretical lens to settle the focus disconnection between trait approaches to entrepreneurs and behavioral approaches to the creation of new enterprises and corporate entrepreneurship, this paper intended to conduct 4 studies with Chinese entrepreneurs as subjects to make breakthroughs a Chinese culture grounded construct of entrepreneurship and a theretical model for entrepreneurial process by investigating the fit process of entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial activities.In study 1, a comprehensive procedure based on the classical version of grounded theory was conducted to come up with the construct of entrepreneurship. The comprehensive procedure includes: (1) conceptually coding the interviewing and archival records of entrepreneurs; (2) auditing and feedback to the codes by entrepreneurs; (3) discussing the codes among subject matter experts; (4) verify check by coding of 100 business elites; (5) theoretically comparing the codes with evidences from indigenous researches related and from different overseas aspects of entrepreneurial traits, entrepreneurship management, entrepreneurship leadership as well as entrepreneurial orientation, and entrepreneurial competency and resources; (6) grounding the codes to Chinese cultural norms. Eventually a culture-grounded and theory-embedded construct of entrepreneurship was developed. Entrepreneurship refers to an endogenous state which entrepreneurs perform in pursuit of sustained success. It is composed of 4 dimensions: ambition, creativity, self-enabling, and burdening (ACEB). Burdening and self-enabling represent the virtuous features of Chinese cultural gene. In study 2, Process theory and variance theory were integrated into case study of "entrepreneur Niu Gensheng and entrepreneurial MengNiu". Eventually a person-entrepreneurship fit model comprised of 5 variables of entrepreneurship, organizational entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial performance, entrepreneurial ecology, and intelligence capitals was developed to represent the entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurship motives organizational entrepreneurship aiming high sustained growth. Ecology makes entrepreneurial behaviors, and is made by the entrepreneurial activities of organizations. Intelligence capitals play a role of core resources in the entrepreneurial process, and are simutaniously developed during the entrepreneurial process and influenced by entrepreneurial ecology.In study 3, the 4-dimension construct of entrepreneurship was validated in terms of the composite view of multidimensional constructs. EFA and CFA revealed that entrepreneurship had 4 dimensions with moderate correlations among dimensions. A 4-dimension model was more stable than any other substitutional model. The average variances extracted by the dimensions' measures and their contrast to correlations among dimensions revealed the 4-dimension construct had good convergent validity and discriminant validity. Correlation analysis at dimension level between entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial competency revealed entrepreneurship had good nomological validity. Entrepreneurship showed predictive validity to criterion of career success both at variable level and at dimension level. At dimension level, creativity, ambition, and self-enabling showed significant effects on evaluation of career success.In study 4: (1) the relationships among entrepreneurship, organizational entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial performance were investigated with backward regression analysis. The results indicated that entrepreneurship significantly explained the variances of organizational entrepreneurship and of entrepreneurial performance. At dimension level, creativity, self-enabling, burdening and ambition all showed significant effects on organizational entrepreneurship, and creativity and burdening showed significant effects on entrepreneurial performance. Organizational entrepreneurship showed a sound mediating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial performance. (2) Entrepreneurial ecology significantly explained the variances of organizational entrepreneurial performance and of organizational intelligence capitals. At dimension level, societal support and policy regulation showed significant effects on entrepreneurial performance. Both organizational entrepreneurship and organizational intelligence capitals showed a sound mediating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurial ecology and entrepreneurial performance. (3) Intelligence capitals showed a sound mediating effect on the relationship between organizational entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial performance. The validated entrepreneurial process model showed the effects of entrepreneurship on entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship motives organizational entrepreneurship, which is made by and "makes" entrepreneurial ecology, to enhance intelligence capitals by which entrepreneurial performance is releaized.As a whole, this paper made 2 breakthroughs. The first is the entrepreneurship fited with entrepreneurial activities. By indigenously developed and systematically validated an entrepreneurship construct of 4 dimensions: ambition, creativity, self-enabling, and burdening (ACEB), with Chinese entrepreneurs as sample, the predictive validity of entrepreneurship construct was indicated both individually with career success as criterion and organizationally with organizational entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial performance as criterion. The second is a person-entrepreneurship fit model of entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurship motives organizational entrepreneurship, which is made by and "makes" entrepreneurial ecology, to enhance intelligence capitals by which entrepreneurial performance is releaized. Entrepreneurial ecology influences organizational entrepreneurship and intelligence capitals by which is mediated to influenced entrepreneurial performance. By integrating thoses two breakthgoughs, a people-based model of entrepreneurship-focused development was presented, which has considerable implications towards both theoretically extending entrepreneurship and management research and practically strengthening Chinese entrepreneurs and building an innovative country.