Top Management Team,Internationalization And Performance Of Entrepreneurial Ventures

Along with the development of global economic integration and deepening of openness of China’s economy, there emerged lots of international new ventures (INVs) in the coastal area of China, which play an important role in developing the local economy. In recent years, researches on international entrepreneurship attach high attention to how these international new ventures obtain development and success in the highly comparative and turbulent international marketing environment. Top management team (TMT) is the top tier of strategic decision-making, which is significant important to the internalization of international new ventures, however, few scholars conduct deep research on it. Based on Upper echelons perspective, this paper establish an important characteristic-international experience heterogeneity of top management team, and take international propensity, international entry mode, international scope and international degree as independent variable, and use top management team tenure heterogeneity, educational level and level of regional foreign investment as moderators. This research aims to answer the following questions:How TMT international experience heterogeneity influence international propensity, international entry mode, international scope and international degree of entrepreneurial enterprises and whether those influences will be different or not in different situations of TMT tenure heterogeneity, educational level and level of regional foreign investment.What’s more, although the relationship between performance and internationalization of mature enterprise has been deeply researched, this relationship of international new ventures is still waiting to be explored. Thus, this paper tries to answer the question:how international propensity, international entry mode, international scope and international degree influence the international performance of entrepreneurial enterprises, and whether the influence will be different or not in terms of different strength of absorptive capacity. To answer the questions above, firstly this paper conducts the literature review, and then with a case study the paper came up with a theoretical framework and hypothesizes. Based on the empirical research of320GEM enterprises, this paper obtained the following conclusion:1, TMT international experience heterogeneity has a positive impact on international propensity, outward foreign direct investment and international degree of entrepreneurial enterprises, however, stand no significant effect on the outward foreign direct investment location choice;2, The moderate effect of TMT tenure heterogeneity, educational level and level of regional foreign investment is partly supported;3, International propensity has a positive impact on international performance of entrepreneurial enterprises, while international degree has a negative impact on international performance, however, outward foreign direct investment and outward foreign direct investment location choice stand no significant effect on international performance;4, With stronger absorptive capacity, the international propensity and international degree has a significant positive impact on international performance, however, outward foreign direct investment and outward foreign direct investment location choice stand no significant effect on international performance.This paper expands and fulfills Upper echelons perspective on the research of international new ventures, explores the impact of TMT international experience heterogeneity on the internationalization of entrepreneurial enterprises systematically, and brings entrepreneurial enterprises the awareness of the importance of TMT construction on successful internationalization. Moreover, this paper also conducts theoretical exploration and empirical test on the relationship of internationalization and performance of entrepreneurial enterprises in china, which bringing practical apocalypse for them.