Research On The Relationship Between Entrepreneurial Social Network Embeddedness And Performance

In recent years, along with China's entrepreneurial economic development and national implementation of innovation and entrepreneurship strategy, entrepreneurial cooperation has become a growing phenomenon between firms, forming new cooperative relationship with its main form as entrepreneurial enterprises social network as. In academia, more and more scholars have begun to pay attention to social networks embedded in the mechanisms of cooperation in entrepreneurial enterprises behavior, attaching greater importance to social network embeddedness theory and its implications, and significant progress has been made in the research. However, from the perspective of relational embeddedness, few previous studies have focused on the main features and mechanisms of linking relationship between the main body in entrepreneurship supported by individuals and organizations. This dissertation attempts to, from the perspective of relational embeddedness, carry out an in-depth exploration of the concept, structure and performance embedded in entrepreneurial enterprises social network, as well as the impact of competitive environment in the market.The first research is an interview research on the concepts and ideas embedded in entrepreneurial social network embeddedness. From the perspective of relational embeddedness, this dissertation carries out 43 semi-structured interviews of senior management personnel from 32 enterprises of different stages, different ownerships, and different scales of operations in Zhejiang Province, in order to understand and identify the characteristics and typical examples of entrepreneurial social network embeddedness in the context of Chinese culture. Based on the semi-structured interviews, this dissertation makes material selection and content classification, and extracts the key elements and ideas embedded in entrepreneurial social network through the coding analysis. The results show that, in the context of Chinese culture, individual entrepreneurial social network embeddedness consists of three elements--affective commitment, interpersonal trust and reciprocity; while organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness consists of four elements-- institution trust, information sharing, joint problem solving and harmony for all winners.Base on the first research, on the principle of geographical convenience, data analysis and structure extraction, this second research of the dissertation chooses Hangzhou Greenlander Information Technology Co., Ltd. at its start-up phase as a case study. It further explores the use of critical incident analysis technique, the theory of entrepreneurial social network embeddedness and its relationship with corporate performance, providing necessary theoretical preparation for establishing social network embedded in business models and verifying the relationship between entrepreneurial social network embeddedness and corporation performance. Through in-depth interviews, access to company records, data analysis and structure extraction, this dissertation carries out in-depth analysis on three key co-operations in Greenlander. It finds out that the four elements-- institution trust, information sharing, joint problem solving and harmony for all winners-- constitute individual entrepreneurial social network embeddedness in Greenlander and have a significant impact on corporate performance. In addition, the case study also finds that instead of being four separate elements, the above four play interactive effects in business practice.The third research, based on the previous researches and the results of three questionnaires, carries out entrepreneurial social network embeddedness questionnaire in 205 entrepreneurial firms in Zhejiang province, and carries out explorative factor analysis and confirmative factor analysis among 118 valid questionnaires respectively. The results show that the three-dimension model of individual organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness and four-dimension model of organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness is the most stable, and both of the models have good convergent validities and discriminate validities. Research has shown that individual organizational entrepreneurial social network differs significantly in the length of work seniority, but differs little in organization and business factors; however, four-dimension model of organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness has a significant difference on organizational factors. Based on the model of entrepreneurial social network embeddedness, the fourth research uses correlation analysis, multi-regression analysis, and structural equation model on 235 valid questionnaires, in order to examine the relationship between entrepreneurial social network embeddedness and business performance as well as the impact of competition intensity variable and organizational variable. The results show that: (1) in individual entrepreneurial social network embeddedness, affective commitment and personal trust have a significant impact on growth performance and cooperation performance; reciprocity has a significant impact on cooperation performance; (2) In organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness, institution trust and information sharing have a significant impact on growth performance; institution trust, joint problem solving and harmony for all winners have a significant impact on cooperation performance; (3) Competition strength variable and entrepreneurial social network embeddedness have strong interactive effects; (4) Organizational variable and entrepreneurial social network embeddedness have strong interactive effects. At the same time, this research uses a structural equation model to study the mediation effect mechanism in entrepreneurial social network embeddedness. The results show that: (1) organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness is a meditative variable in corporate performance of individual entrepreneurial social network embeddedness; (2) organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness has partial mediative effect on the relationship between affective commitment and corporate performance, between personal trust and corporate performance, and between reciprocity and corporate performance; (3) in the relationship between corporate performance and individual entrepreneurial social network embeddedness, full meditative model organizational entrepreneurial social network embeddedness plays a better role than partial meditative model.The last part of this dissertation summarizes the main conclusions of this research, explores the theoretical progress and practical implication, as well as limitations and issues to be further solved.