A Study On Chinese Private Entrepreneurs’ Status And Firm Performance In The Context Of Economic Transformation

Since the reform and opening up,China’s private economy has developed rapidly and made outstanding contributions to the accelerated development of the national economy.At the same time,the status of private entrepreneurs has gone through a spiral process.At present,China has entered a crucial period of economic structure transformation and upgrading,private enterprises need to play the role of the main force,how to improve the performance of private enterprises is very important.However,it is not clear how the "soft power" of the status of private entrepreneurs affects and transforms into the "hard currency" of enterprise performance,and the relevant research needs to be strengthened.This dissertation focuses on the important topic of "private entrepreneur status and enterp rise performance" under the background of transitional economy,and mainly answers three q uestions:(1)how does private entrepreneur status affect enterprise performance? Specifically,what impact does the status of private entrepreneurs have on the long-term oriented financial performance,innovation performance and social responsibility performance? What boundary conditions are affected?(2)Are there differences in the impact of different dimensions of entr epreneur status on enterprise performance? Such as subjective and objective dimensions,polit ical,economic and social dimensions.(3)is there a imprint effect on the impact of entreprene ur status on enterprise performance? What is the realistic basis of this imprinting effect?This dissertation uses the methods of literature research,multiple regression analysis and case study to answer the above questions one by one.Firstly,based on the high echelon theory and social emotional wealth theory,focusing on the dimension of corporate social responsibility performance,this paper explores the relationship between the comprehensive status of entrepreneurs and corporate philanthropy,and puts forward research hypotheses.Then,it discusses the moderating effect of the three dimensions of family involvement on the main effect and uses the data of the national questionnaire survey of private enterprises from 2010 to2012 to test the hypotheses Econometric analysis and hypothesis testing.Secondly,combined with the high-level echelon theory and organizational imprint theory,this paper explores the impact of entrepreneurs’ political status on enterprise innovation performance,and puts forward corresponding hypotheses.At the same time,this paper analyzes the moderating effect of three variables: enterprise restructuring,industry association and government subsidies,and further clarifies the boundary conditions of the impact.Based on the data of the national questionnaire survey of private enterprises in 2010,combined with econometric analysis methods and statistical models,the research hypotheses are verified.Then,it studies the impact of entrepreneurs’ socio-economic status on corporate financial performance.Based on the high-level echelon theory and institutional theory,it deduces research hypotheses and analyzes the moderating effect of institutionalization level and political connection in the region where the enterprises are located on the main effect.Using the national private enterprise questionnaire survey data from 2010 to 2012,it uses econometric model and statistical analysis to empirically test the research results Design.Finally,in view of the fact that the intermediate mechanism and process of the impact of entrepreneur status on enterprise performance are still unclear,this paper uses interview analysis and content analysis method,taking the plastic surgery industry as the research object,randomly selects seven private plastic surgery hospitals as samples to explore the imprint effect of their founder’s initial status on the survival and business performance of new hospitals.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The higher the entrepreneur’s comprehensive status is,the more positive the entrepreneur’s comprehensive status is.This positive effect in family business shows different results due to the effects of social emotional wealth and family involvement.Specifically,1)when the entrepreneur owns the ownership,the positive effect of the entrepreneur’s comprehensive status on the enterprise’s charitable donation will be enhanced because of the maintenance of the family’s reputation,status and other non-economic effects;2)when the entrepreneur is also a senior executive of the enterprise,the positive effect of the entrepreneur’s comprehensive status on the enterprise’s charitable donation will be enhanced,The reason is that the emergence of "housekeeper effect" requires entrepreneurs to consider more about the cost of charitable donations.3)The reason is that the "dark side" of social emotional wealth makes entrepreneurs’ decisions more conservative,thus reducing the investment in corporate philanthropy.(2)The political status of entrepreneurs has a negative impact on the innovation performance of enterprises,because the past political experience of entrepreneurs has left the mark of conservative and cautious decision-making,which affects their future strategic decisionmaking.However,this negative effect is alleviated with government subsidies,and is more serious when there is industry association.The reform of enterprises has no effect on this negative influence.(3)There is a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurs’ socio-economic status and corporate financial performance,that is,the higher entrepreneurs’ socio-economic status,the better corporate financial performance.It is further found that the local institutional development level positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic status and corporate financial performance while the political connection negatively moderates the above-mentioned relationship.That is to say,when enterprises have political connection,entrepreneurs’ socio-economic status has a weaker positive impact on corporate financial performance.When the region where the enterprise is located has a better system,that is,a higher level of marketization,the above positive impact will be enhanced.(4)Through the case interview and fs QCA,we find the intermediate mechanism of the impact of entrepreneur status on enterprise performance.Taking the private specialist medical industry as the research object,seven newly established private Stomatology,Ophthalmology and plastic surgery hospitals were randomly selected as samples,and semi-structured interviews and content analysis were used to study the initial status imprint effect of hospital founders.The results showed that the initial status of entrepreneurs affected the survival and business performance of enterprises through entrepreneurial motivation and resource/legitimacy acquisition,and this status imprint fades with the development of enterprises.At this time,the imprint of strategic alternative status has become an important factor affecting enterprise performance.The research contributions of this paper are as follows: First,the introduced entrepreneur status is an objective and comprehensive concept that includes entrepreneur power,wealth and reputation.Unlike subjective perception status,which only reflects the social stratification of entrepreneurs from the psychological perception level,entrepreneur objective status is a more comprehensive and three-dimensional measure of entrepreneur characteristics,which supplements the content of senior executives’ demographic characteristics and enriches upperechelonl theory.Second,the introduction of organizational imprinting theory enriches the relevant content of upper-echelon theory that executives’ experience affects corporate performance from the vertical dimension of history,providing a new research perspective for corporate strategy research.The empirical study reveals the mechanism of the maintenance and change of the entrepreneurial status imprint,which provides some theoretical support for the external intervention of the organizational imprinting effect.Third,it reveals that the entrepreneur status has a double-edged sword effect on enterprise performance.On the one hand,it needs a good and sound market economy system to ensure the rational and effective play of the positive role of the entrepreneur status,and on the other hand,it needs to build a harmonious,"pro" and "clear" new political and business ties,which puts forward higher requirements for the system construction under the background of China’s economic transformation.