Research On Mechanism Between Business Plan And New Business Performance From The Perspective Of Environmental Uncertainty

The creation of new businesses is a dynamic and complex process. In thisprocess, entrepreneurs need to carry out a series of preparatory activities to achieve arational allocation of resources, make the new businesses successfully creation. Theoccurrence of these entrepreneurial activities is a complex process intertwined by aseries of linear and nonlinear. In these entrepreneurial activities, the business plan isan extremely important and special entrepreneurial activity; it plays two differentroles in the process of new business gestation: on the one hand, under the perspectiveof economic rationality, the business plan can be used to develop opportunities, andguide resource integration activities; on the other hand, business plan can be used bythe stakeholders as a covariant factors with the intrinsic quality of the new enterprise.Therefore, under the logic of legitimating, business plan is an important way to makethe new firm legitimating. As the important role of the business plan in theentrepreneurial process, we want to in-depth analysis the objective regularity of theentrepreneurial process. This research followed the process perspective which is themainstream research paradigm in the entrepreneurial field, relying on the implem-entation of the Chinese the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics(CPSED) by theNankai University Entrepreneurial Management Research Center, and use businessplan this particular entrepreneurial activities as a starting point, to explain themechanisms of the business plan in the generation of new businesses. We are in orderto reveal the essential characteristics of the entrepreneurial process.The whole study is around the core of the business plan to construct; the designcan be roughly divided into two parts: the first part of the study extend forward,investigating the antecedents of the business plan, focusing on explaining howinstitutional pressure, previous experience and entrepreneurial opportunities influencebusiness plan; the second part of the research extend backward, deeply exploring thelogic chain between the business plan and the new business performance, and examining the contingency mechanism of the environmental uncertainty in theprocess. First of all, we use the institutional theory, the legitimation theory, and thegoal setting theory as the bases of this research, and integrate the analysis of the fieldof strategic management research ideas, gradually establish the chain of logicbetween the constructs; Subsequently, with the large sample data which comes fromCPSED, we use the factor analysis, the reliability and validity testing, the hierarchicallinear regression analysis, the hierarchical logistic regression analysis and othermethods of an empirical test, reaching the following conclusions: First, entrepreneursdevelop a business plan is the behavior of institutional factors and economic rationalfactors work together to drive; the difference of coercive isomorphism forces,previous work experience, and opportunities lead entrepreneurs to develop businessplans of the different degree of formality. Second, entrepreneurs start early to developa business plan for a higher degree of formality is conducive to enhancing thefinancial performance of the new enterprise. Third, Entrepreneurs start early todevelop a business plan with higher degree of formality to ensure the moreentrepreneurial activity take place successfully; and the sooner develop a businessplan, the more help to improve the efficiency of the entrepreneur to complete variousentrepreneurial activities.Fourth, Competitive environment of uncertainty play animportant role in moderating the process of planning and new business performanceeffect: on one hand, if there is the higher the competitive environment of uncertainty,a more formal business plan can significantly enhance the financial performance ofthe new enterprise; on the other hand, there is the higher competitive environmentuncertainty, the early development of business plan with higher degree of formalitywill reduce the efficiency of the implementation of entrepreneurial activities.The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:First, using the business plan and the new business performance as the main line, witha new perspective of elements integration to explore new businesses creation processduring the dynamic mechanism. Second, in the level of behavior, we analysis themechanism of the timing and formality of business plan influncing the creativeactivity, clearly portray the causal link in plan-activities-performance. Third, with thetheory as the basis of a division, we divide the environmental uncertainty into two aspects: the uncertainty of financing environment and the uncertainty of competitiveenvironment, then we systematically and comprehensively compare the differences ofthe different levels of external contextual factors during the new firm creation.The overall structure of this paper is organized as follows: The first chapterintroduced the major research background, research questions, research content andresearch methods. The second chapter is the literature review section, around theresearch questions, we expound the theoretical basis and theoretical scenarios. Inchapter three, we construct the overall research model, and define the key variables.The fourth chapter introduces the research design and the approach to the study, andexpounds the whole process of research implementation of CPSED. The fifth chapteris the empirical analysis and data processing, uses the actual verification of thetheoretical framework presented earlier. The sixth chapter is a summary of the overallstudy, points out innovations, while analyses the paper’s inadequacies and thenpresents the future research directions.