Research On Mechanism Of Copreneurial Co-Leadership Based On Relational Identity

With the "mass entrepreneurship,mass innovation" policy setting off a nationwide entrepreneurial boom,more and more entrepreneurs and spouses jointly carry out entrepreneurial activities,copreneurship,a low threshold but highly feasible entrepreneurial form has ushered in a critical period of rapid development.In recent years,copreneurship has received widespread attention from the public.During the practice of entrepreneurship,under the joint leadership,they overcome the new disadvantages of the imperfect new enterprise system and lack of resources,and produce dynamics and flexibility that other entrepreneurial models do not have.However,compared with the booming practices of copreneurship,the academic research on the phenomenon of copreneurship has just started.In particular,most scholars regard copreneurship as an one-led entrepreneurial activity and spouses as supportive partners,pay little attention to the co-leadership of spouses under the copreneurial identity.The existing research focus on role division or spousal relationship are difficult to apply directly to the co-leadership situation of couples.Therefore,it is urgent to integrate the systematic theory research of role identity and spouse identity.In this context,exploring how do couples deal with role relationships and spouse relationships,at the same time exerting the synergy of spousal co-leadership,and achieving long-term survival and stable development,not only explains the key theoretical issues that need to be explored in the field of copreneurship,but also has important practical significance for guiding copreneurial activities to promote the economic transformation and upgrading of our country.To this end,this research is based on copreneurship phenomenon in China,choosing spouses who jointly operate and manage entrepreneurial activities as the research objects,taking the co-leadership of husband and wife as the research point,and taking copreneurial identity as the theoretical perspective.Through a variety of research methods(including literature analysis,narrative analysis,case study,grounded theory,questionnaire research),the dissertation reveal the mechanism of spousal co-leadership under copreneurial identity from relationship basis,behavior model and influence path.The main research achievements are as follows:(1)Through the copreneurial identity theory,this dissertation constructs a model of role identity and spousal identity synergy mechanism in copreneurial context and reveals the relationship basis of the co-leadership behavior.By investigating and analyzing the daily entrepreneurial activities and experiences of 33 couples using narrative methodology,this research identify role identity and spouse identity in entrepreneurial practices,and then explores and analyzes the process of synergy and interaction between role identity and spouse identity while maintaining the spousal relationship.On the basis of copreneurial identity,it reveal the internal driving force of entrepreneurial behavior from two aspects:organization creation and entrepreneurial resource acquisition.Several interesting findings were spotted.First,copreneurial identity in maintaining the spousal relationship contains two properties:role identity and spouse identity.Second,the synergy effect of spousal relationship identity is produced through interaction of role identity and spouse identity;Third,the synergy of two identities in spousal relationship maintenance not only benefits the common leadership and flexible decision-making of daily entrepreneurial activities,but also stimulates potential entrepreneurial resources and develop organizational potentials.(2)From the perspective of shared leadership by spouse,this dissertation analyzes the entrepreneurial behavior process of joint decision-making,integrating resources and coordinating actions between couples,and reveals the behavioral synergy mechanism of husband and wife joint leadership.Adopting the exploratory case study analysis,a typical copreneurial enterprise is tracked and researched,and the organizational synergy of spouse sharing leadership is analyzed from three levels:strategies,resources and behaviors.The study found that role identity promotes the balancing of power structure in spousal co-leadership,and spouse identity forms emotional connection between coleaders.First of all,,by balancing the joint decision-making between cognition and emotion,spouses can effectively identify opportunities for new ventures in strategically.Second,for resource acquisition,spouses can enhance the resource potential of new ventures by jointly integrating individual,family and enterprise resources.Third,spouses can improve the opportunity utilization ability of new ventures by coordinating organizational tasks and member relationships in behavior.(3)By applying the co-leadership theory to the copreneurial situation,this dissertation propose the concept of copreneurial co-leadership,and reveal the mechanism of copreneurial co-leadership influence on new ventures performance.Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,the concept of copreneurial co-leadership,which consists of four dimensions:commitment consistency,role complementarity,collaborative reciprocity and emotional dependence,was proposed,and copreneurial co-leadership scale was developed.Based on the sustainable family business model and the family FIRO theory,the copreneurial relationship and entrepreneurial interaction variables are introduced to construct the path of the copreneurial co-leadership under different relationship identities,and to reveal the mechanism of copreneurial co-leadership influence on new ventures performance.Using the questionnaire survey method,through the investigation of 386 copreneurs,the empirical data analysis found that:in the context of entrepreneurship,copreneurial co-leadership has a positive impact on new ventures performance;copreneurial co-leadership can enhance new ventures performance by strengthening copreneurial relationship(role relationship and spouse relationship)or promoting entrepreneurial interactions(entrepeneurial business communication and spousal emotional support);besides,the copreneurial relationship and interaction form a continuous mediating role between the copreneurial co-leadership and the new ventures performance,so as to construct the performance influence mechanism of the copreneurial co-leadership.