Entrepreneurs’ Risk Control Ability, Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy And New Venture Growth

Entrepreneurial activities have a great forward-push on the development of thenational economy. However, start-ups are faced with graver situation due to theincreasing risks from rapidly changing technology, market and environment. Thus, ithas been a core issue of entrepreneurial management on how to controlentrepreneurial risks. Studies have shown that most entrepreneurial risks arecontrollable, and entrepreneurs, as main body in risk control, whose risk controlability play a important role in the growth of newly-established businesses.Meanwhile, entrepreneurial self-efficacy as the inner cognitive characteristics affectsthe level of entrepreneurs’ risk control ability, leading to different growth performanceof start-ups set up by those with different sense of entrepreneurial self-efficacy.Previous studies mostly deal with the growth of start-ups form the perspective of thecontent and control strategy on entrepreneurial risks, and a few studies analyze therelation between risk and the growth of new businesses form entrepreneurial riskcontrol perspective. Especially, there are fewer studies introduce entrepreneurshipcognitive theory to analyze the influence mechanism on entrepreneurs’ risk controlability, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and new venture growth.Based on relative theories and literature, this study analyzes the growth ofstart-ups based on risk control process and then set up the route mechanism modeldescribing the growth of new businesses with entrepreneurs’ ability of risk controlbeing the independent variable and entrepreneurial self-efficacy being theintermediary variable respectively by introducing the key variable——entrepreneurs‘sability of risk control, and by making risk control process as main line. On the basis oftheoretical analysis, we develop a questionnaire and255copies sent out to theYangtze River Delta are returned valid. Hypothesis testing by means of regressionanalysis and structural equation model reveals: In entrepreneurs’ ability of risk control,interpersonal skills have a direct impact on new venture growth, and riskidentification ability, risk decision-making capacity, resource integration andmanagement ability have no direct impact on new venture growth; Entrepreneurs’interpersonal skills have a positive impact on the growth of new ventures, andentrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a partial intermediary role during this process;Entrepreneurs’ risk identification ability, risk decision-making capacity, resource integration and management ability have a positive impact on the growth of newventures and entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a full intermediary role during thisprocess.The study makes the division of dimensions on entrepreneurs’ ability of riskcontrol and the growth mechanism of start-ups based on risk control process moreclear. On the basis of the above, we analysis influence of entrepreneurs’ risk controlability and entrepreneurial self-efficacy to the growth of new ventures. It revealsentrepreneurial self-efficacy plays an intermediary role in the relationship betweenentrepreneurs’ risk control ability and the growth of start-ups. This paper withentrepreneurial risk control as main line studies the growth mechanism ofnewly-established businesses from the perspective of risk bearers (entrepreneurs),providing a different view on the research of entrepreneurial risk and start-ups.