Research On Antecedents Of Entrepreneurial Alertness And The Mechanism Of Its Effect On Performance Of New Ventures

Most new ventures are small and micro enterprises,which have made significant contributions to increasing employment,promoting technological innovation,and driving national and regional social and economic growth.In recent years,innovation and entrepreneurship has become an important strategy to accelerate China’s economic transformation and development.However,the reality is that most start-ups are facing a high risk of failure and in a predicament with high uncertainty of economic returns.According to the survey of Shanghai Entrepreneurial Appraising Center,the entrepreneurial failure rate in China is as high as 90%,and the failure rate of new ventures within 5 years accounts for 70%.For new ventures,how to quickly identify new opportunities in a dynamic environment and obtain the necessary resources to achieve good performance is still a big challenge.In order to achieve good business performance in a dynamic environment,entrepreneurs must be highly alert to new potential opportunities and available resources.Therefore,improving entrepreneurial alertness is the key factor to promote the growth and development of new ventures,and it has important practical value for promoting entrepreneurship.Simultaneously,at the theoretical level,it is of great significance to discuss the antecedents of entrepreneurial alertness and the mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness on the performance of new ventures for understanding the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness and revealing the role of entrepreneurial alertness in the process of improving the performance of new ventures.However,the existing literature on entrepreneurial alertness is still insufficient.First,there is a lack of intensive research on the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness.Based on social cognition theory,this study suggests that entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility and cognitive complexity affect their entrepreneurial alertness through searching,filtering and interpreting information,and the process is further moderated by environmental dynamism.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical value to explore the role of entrepreneurial cognitive structure and environmental dynamism in the formation of entrepreneurial alertness from the perspective of the interaction between micro cognition and macro environment.Second,the existing research on the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance is not sufficient.Most scholars focus on explaining the concept of entrepreneurial alertness and the characteristics of entrepreneurs with high alertness,but the theoretical research on how entrepreneurial alertness affects firm performance is still incomplete.Therefore,it is necessary to further explore the path of how entrepreneurial alertness affects new venture performance,so as to reveal the“black box” of the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance.To sum up,this research aims to explore the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness and explain the mechanism by which entrepreneurial alertness affects the performance of new ventures.Based on social cognition theory,Study 1 has constructed a theoretical model of the research on the antecedents of entrepreneurial alertness,trying to solve the two questions: “how does the entrepreneurs’ cognitive structure affect entrepreneurial alertness” and “how does environmental dynamism moderate the relationship between the entrepreneurs’ cognitive structure and entrepreneurial alertness”.Based on the entrepreneurial process theory,resource-based theory and contingency theory,two mediating variables(entrepreneurial bricolage and business model innovation)and one contingency variable(environment dynamism)have been introduced in Study 2.This study constructs a model of the influence of entrepreneurial alertness on new venture performance,trying to reveal the path and boundary conditions of entrepreneurial alertness affecting the performance of new ventures.Through literature analysis and theoretical deduction,this research has proposed 26 hypotheses,and collected data from 463 entrepreneurs using questionnaire.SPSS22.0 and AMOS21.0 were used for data analysis to test the hypotheses.The empirical results of Study 1 show that the cognitive flexibility and cognitive complexity both have positive impacts on entrepreneurial alertness,and environmental dynamism positively moderates the relationship between cognitive flexibility/complexity and entrepreneurial alertness.On the one hand,entrepreneurs with a high level of cognitive flexibility will be more proactive in searching for opportunities and resources to create economic value.Especially,when the environmental dynamism is high,entrepreneurs with high cognitive flexibility can conduct a wider range of information search through their ability to deal with complex problems flexibly,which has a stronger positive impact on entrepreneurial alertness.On the other hand,cognitive complexity enables entrepreneurs to deal with problems from more diversified perspectives,enabling enterprises to quickly absorb new information and knowledge to help them overcome cognitive inertia,which will help new ventures understand changes in external market more comprehensively,thereby improving entrepreneurial alertness.When the environmental dynamism is high,high cognitive complexity can make entrepreneurs more sensitive to information such as constantly changing market demand and competition in the environment,and have a stronger positive impact on entrepreneurial alertness.There are following conclusions in Study 2.First,entrepreneurial alertness has a positive impact on the performance of new ventures.Entrepreneurial alertness can promote new ventures to make full use of resources,exploit market information and business opportunities,and enhance the performance of new ventures.However,searching and scanning dimension of entrepreneurial alertness has no significant impact on the performance of new ventures.Second,entrepreneurial alertness has an indirect impact on performance through entrepreneurial bricolage.Entrepreneurs with high alertness are more capable of searching,connecting and evaluating information and resources,which helps to improve entrepreneurial bricolage.The subjective knowledge and interpretation created by bricolage enable organizations to understand how resources and their combinations provide specific productive services and opportunities,which in turn will contribute to the improvement of performance.Third,entrepreneurial alertness has an indirect impact on the performance of new ventures through business model innovation.Entrepreneurial alertness makes entrepreneurs more sensitive to the signals of changes in commercial components in the environment,and can promote entrepreneurs to integrate commercial components to design new business models,thereby improving the performance of new ventures.Fourth,entrepreneurial bricolage and business model innovation play a chain intermediary role in the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance.Fifth,environmental dynamism positively moderates the positive relationship between entrepreneurial bricolage and new venture performance,and the mediating role of entrepreneurial bricolage in the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and performance.The changing environment provides more diverse opportunities and enables entrepreneurs to persist in participating in entrepreneurial activities.New ventures with high level of entrepreneurial bricolage can create new solutions to unstable challenges and improve business performance.Sixth,environmental dynamism positively moderates the positive relationship between business model innovation and new venture performance,and the mediating role of business model innovation in the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance.In a dynamic environment,entrepreneurs with high alertness can perceive the information changes in the environment,and connect and combine the seemingly disparate “dots” between information or commercial components,so as to promote business model innovation and new venture performance.The innovation and contribution to the existing literature is fourfold.First,it has greatly extended the theoretical research on entrepreneurial alertness and improved the theoretical explanation of the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness.Second,this study systematically explores the influence mechanism of entrepreneurial alertness on new venture performance,reveals how entrepreneurial alertness affects new venture performance through entrepreneurial bricolage,complements the theoretical knowledge of the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance,and points out the direction for subsequent research.Third,the research on entrepreneurial alertness has been extended to the field of strategic decision-making,and the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and new venture performance through business model innovation has been explored.This paper extends the literature of entrepreneurial alertness from the perspective of strategic decision-making and strengthens the explanation power of entrepreneurial alertness to entrepreneurial management practice.Fourth,this study explores the contingency effect of environmental dynamism on the progress of improving new venture performance.It strengthens the understanding of the relationship between external environmental factors and new venture performance,which helps reveal the mechanism how to enhance new venture performance,and points out the direction for the theoretical development and practical management of entrepreneurship.