Research On The Formation And Mechanism Of Entrepreneurial Leadership

Nowadays,entrepreneurship and innovation have become the main dependence of economic development,and also an important tool for the long-term sustained and steady growth of national economy.Faced with the new normal of socialist market economy driven by investment and innovation,the market environment is changing with each passing day,the direction of industry development,market competition pattern and people's consumption habits are constantly changing,and the process of entrepreneurship is facing many difficulties.Under this unstable entrepreneurial circumstance,how to lead organizations continuously getting profits through identify and develop entrepreneurship opportunities is the fatal issue for leaders to solve immediately.In this regard,more and more scholars focus on a new leadership style,which is called entrepreneurial leadership.Entrepreneurial leadership takes the entrepreneurial mind as the leading factor,takes the identification and development of entrepreneurial opportunities as the core,and leads followers to successfully achieve the entrepreneurial goal(Renko,2015).It mainly emphasizes the continuous pursuit of entrepreneurial activities,the discovery of entrepreneurship opportunities by constantly examining market changes and looking at problems from a creative perspective,and the creation of opportunities by encouraging and cultivating subordinates' innovative and transformational behavior,in order to successfully lead subordinates to work together to transform opportunities into value creation,so that enterprises can sustainability developing.This kind of leadership has put forward higher requirements for managers' entrepreneurial thinking,consciousness,ability and leadership.However,the Global Entrepreneurship Observation report 2017/18 shows that in the survey of 54 countries,many indicators of Chinese managers' such as entrepreneurial spirit,entrepreneurial perception and opportunity perception fail to reach the average value.The result illustrates that domestic managers generally lack entrepreneurial awareness,ability and enthusiasm,which is not conducive to enterprise innovation and entrepreneurship,but also hinder the sustained growth of the economy of China.Based on the basic thinking of "how to become" and "how to act",this paper takes entrepreneurial leadership as the core,and reviews the relevant concepts and theories,this paper finds and identifies the shortcomings of the existing research,focusing on the formation of entrepreneurial leadership and the mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership on both individual and team level.Research work is carried out from both theoretical and empirical aspects,so as to gain valuable management inspiration and provide theoretical support for effective growth and role of entrepreneurial leadership.Through literature review,we find that the concept of entrepreneurial leadership is not clear enough,and there are similarities with other common leadership styles,which is not conducive to a clear understanding of the connotation boundary of entrepreneurial leadership.In terms of the formation of entrepreneurial leadership,the existing studies are mostly based on theoretical discussion,and empirical research is insufficient,and mostly limited to the analysis of the relationship between individual influencing factors and entrepreneurial leadership,which is not conducive to a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the causes of entrepreneurial leadership behavior.The research on the mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership is mostly confined to the enterprise level,while the individual and team level is still insufficient.Enterprise-level research reflects the positive role of entrepreneurial leadership strategy in the process of formulation and implementation.Individual-level research reflects the leadership role of entrepreneurial leadership in improving employees' innovation and entrepreneurship ideas and behaviors.Team-level research is the key to explain how entrepreneurial leadership transforms individual-level influence into enterprise-level output.From the perspective of the process of "becoming" and "acting",this paper constructs a research framework.On the basis of clarifying the relevant concepts,it focuses on three aspects:the formation of entrepreneurship leadership(sub-study 1),the mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership on employee intrapreneurship(sub-study 2)and the entrepreneurial team performance(sub-study 3).(1)Based on the planned behavior theory and related research,an integrated analysis model of entrepreneurial leadership formation antecedents is constructed,which includes four aspects:achievement motivation,entrepreneurial creativity,perceived organizational status and perceived environmental uncertainty.Based on the data of 226 business leaders,this paper uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA)to analyze the facts and counterfacts of the results of high-level entrepreneurial leadership.(2)Based on social cognitive theory,this paper constructs a model of entrepreneurial leadership's role mechanism in employee entrepreneurship,and explores the mediating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the moderating effect of challenge-hindrance stressors.Based on 262 paired data of leaders and employees,regression analysis and Bootstrap analysis were used to process data and discuss the results.(3)Drawing on Cohen&Bailey's heuristic team effectiveness theory framework(1999),this paper constructs three-path model of emotion(team entrepreneurial passion),behavior(team learning)and emotion-to-behavior(team entrepreneurial passion to team learning)between entrepreneurial leadership and team performance,and explains their mechanism separately through goal-setting theory,emotion contagion theory and broaden and build of positive emotion theory.Based on the data of 289 entrepreneurship teams,regression analysis,structural equation model,Bootstrap and fsQCA were used for data processing and result discussion.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The formation of entrepreneurial leadership is influenced by multi-factor configuration effect.In the high-entrepreneurial leadership condition configuration,achievement motivation,entrepreneurship creativity and organizational status perception are substitutes for each other.Any combination of two of them can constitute the core condition combination to stimulate managers' high-entrepreneurial leadership behavior,while environmental uncertainty perception plays a supporting role.(2)Internal factors are more important than situational factors in the study of influencing factors of entrepreneurial leadership formation.Managers' own achievement motivation and entrepreneurial creativity are the important preconditions for the emergence of entrepreneurial leadership behavior,which mainly affect the subjective intention of managers.At the same time,managers lacking achievement motivation and entrepreneurship creativity can hardly show high entrepreneurial leadership behavior even if they have high organizational status perception or high environmental uncertainty perception.(3)Entrepreneurial leadership can effectively promote employee intrapreneurship.Employee entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a mediating role between the two,and the mediating effect is most obvious when the challenging stressors are high and the hindrance stressors are low.(4)Entrepreneurial leadership has a positive impact on team performance.Entrepreneurial leadership has a positive impact on team performance through emotional(team entrepreneurial passion),behavioral(team learning)and emotional to behavioral(team entrepreneurial passion to team learning).(5)Team performance is affected by configuration effects of various factors.Entrepreneurial leadership,three team entrepreneurial passion roles,and intra-team learning and situational learning can form four combinations of preconditions for high team performance.Among them,entrepreneurial leadership and team learning play a central role,while team entrepreneurial passion plays a supporting role.The influence of entrepreneurial leadership on team members'behavior is a direct means to improve team performance.Emotion is only one of the ways in which leaders change team members' behavior,and it does not play a decisive role.Theoretical contributions:(1)Define the concept of entrepreneurial leadership.This paper clarifies the concept of entrepreneurship leadership through literature review and compares it with transformational,charismatic and knowledge-based ones to highlight the unique connotation of entrepreneurship leadership.(2)Identify the key factors and combination of factors in the formation of entrepreneurial leadership.Based on the overall perspective,this paper constructs an integrated analysis model of the antecedents of entrepreneurial leadership including internal factors and situational factors,identifies the core factors and factors combination,and analyzes their configuration effects.(3)Reveal the influence and mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership at the individual level.By constructing the mechanism model of entrepreneurial leadership on entrepreneurship among employees,the positive role of entrepreneurial leadership at the individual level,as well as the mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the joint moderating role of challenge-obstacle stressors are demonstrated.(4)Reveal the influence and mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership at team level.By constructing the mechanism model of entrepreneurial leadership on entrepreneurial team performance,it shows the positive role of entrepreneurial leadership at the team level,as well as the continuous mediating role of team learning and team entrepreneurial passion.(5)Expanding the application of several theories in the field of entrepreneurial leadership research,such as the theory of planned behavior,social cognitive theory and the theory of positive emotion development and construction.(6)Breaking through the limitations of some traditional qualitative and quantitative research,enriching the research field of entrepreneurial leadership with applying fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method,which is based on the set thought.Management inspiration:(1)When selecting entrepreneurship leaders,we should pay more attention to managers'achievement motivation and entrepreneurship creativity.Individuals with high achievement motivation pursue higher performance,are more confident,dare to face challenges,and can cope with difficulties in Entrepreneurship more calmly.Individuals with high creativity are good at discovering opportunities and creating opportunities,transforming innovation into entrepreneurship,thus showing successful entrepreneurial leadership.(2)Managers should strengthen their awareness of changes in the market environment.Keeping entrepreneurship thinking and constantly examining environmental changes will help enterprises to take the lead in the market and cope with the challenges they may face at any time.(3)Give more organizational support to leaders with ability and pursuit.Given the permissible resource conditions,giving more resource support to managers with ability and pursuit is an important means to promote their entrepreneurial leadership,which is conducive to helping enterprises succeed in entrepreneurship.(4)Strengthen managers'absorption of entrepreneurial leadership.It is necessary for managers to lead employees and teams more actively through entrepreneurial leadership,and to enhance employees'entrepreneurial self-efficacy,team learning,team entrepreneurship passion and so on,so as to improve employees' entrepreneurial behavior and team performance.(5)Control the pressure source reasonably.Although stressors can cause psychological stress reaction in the work of employees,reasonable use and control of challenging-obstructive stressors will produce certain positive effects.(6)Pay attention to the development of team learning activities.Learning behavior is an indispensable team activity to improve the performance of entrepreneurial team.Internal learning improves the knowledge and skills of team members.Situational learning is conducive to exploring more entrepreneurial opportunities.(7)Shaping and cultivating team entrepreneurship passion.Team leaders show their entrepreneurial passion through language,expression,physical behavior and so on.They help the team to construct the overall positive emotions and identity recognition,and help team members to insist on pursuing entrepreneurial goals from the heart.