A Study On The Reltionship Among Entrepreneur's Ability, Motivation And Performance In The Entrepreneurial Firm Of Zhejiang Province

The entrepreneur is the engine of economical growth and the strength of social development. Economical and social development can not take place without a mature cluster of entrepreneurs. In front of any dynamic and competitive firms, there is an outstanding entrepreneur. The ability of the entrepreneur is the forth element after three main basic production (?)tors which support the development of the world economic, including capital, labor, and land. And it relates closely to the subsistence and development of firms, and to the replacement of the entrepreneur stratum. On the other hand, in the face of increasingly fierce market competition, entrepreneurship is widely perceived to be an important factor which will encourage firms to have a further development. Up to now, the empirical study on the relationship between the entrepreneur's ability and the performance is few, and mainly concentrated in mature businesses or large firms. In addition, different research purposes and contents lead to different results. Therefore, the empirical study on the relationship between the entrepreneur's ability and the performance has some theoretical and practical meaning, especially the ability of the entrepreneurial firm.This paper studies the entrepreneurial firm of Zhejiang Province, measures the business performance from business growth and profitability, creatively uses the entrepreneurial motivation as an intermediary variable, discusses the influence on the business performance through entrepreneur's ability and entrepreneurial motivation, and has an emphasis on entrepreneurial motivation as a mediating role between the entrepreneur's ability and performance.This paper is based on relative literature and questionnaire survey, using certain research methods which combine qualitative and quantitative analysis, also theoretic and positive study. Firstly, we define the concept of entrepreneurial firm, entrepreneur's ability, entrepreneurial motivation. Secondly, on the basis of the extensive studies of the literature of our scholars, we respectively come up with the dimensions and the measuring scales of the entrepreneur's ability, entrepreneurial motivation and performance. Thirdly, we work out with a survey questionnaire which is given out in Zhejiang Province, and we get 93 samples and do some relevant analysis on data from these samples. Finally, on the basis of the positive study, we elaborate the research results; give some suggestion about how to improve the entrepreneur's ability; point out the deficiency of the paper, the suggestion about the later study and so on.In the paper, the main conclusions of the research are as follows:First, the dimensions of the entrepreneur's ability-- practical ability, opportunity ability, relational ability, learning ability have positive correlation with entrepreneurial performance.Second, the entrepreneur's ability has significant influence on the achievement motivation, which is different from the basical motivation.Third, the entrepreneurial motivation plays a partial intermediary role between the entrepreneur's ability and performance. The entrepreneur's ability not only influences on the performance directly, but also influences through the entrepreneurial motivation indirectly.Forth, the background variables of entrepreneur and firm, have markedly different influences on the entrepreneur's ability and entrepreneurial motivation, which further affect the entrepreneur's performance, such as the variables of gender, age, education level, types of firms, firm size, industry, and business life cycle.