Research On The Influence Of Entrepreneur's Attention Allocation And Ambidextrous Behavior On Social Enterprise Performance

Social entrepreneurship needs to pursue the dual goals of economy and society,and achieve a dual mission to create a hybrid organization.The problem of duality and target paradox in mixed organizations are becoming the hot topics of theoretical research,especially the target attention and management decision-making of entrepreneurs.According to existing theories,the social entrepreneur's focus of attention and their ambidextrous behaviors are the key to integrate the contradictory tension between the economic and social goals of social enterprises.The focus of attention can determine the company's strategic behavior,help to create bundles of resources,and ultimately affect the performance of enterprises.However,with the change of environment,the competitive relationship between the social and economic tasks of social enterprises is becoming more and more serious.Faced with limited attention resources,entrepreneurs may allocate their attention based on previous experience,which may undermine the sustainability of the hybrid organization.Therefore,how do decision makers choose and balance the competing attention structure? In different cultural contexts,should social entrepreneurs focus on social issues or distribute attention as a whole? How does the entrepreneur's attention allocation affect ambidextrous behaviors and performance outcomes? It is necessary to further comprehensively analyze the relationship between entrepreneurs' attention focus,behavior and goals in specific social enterprises situations.Consequently,this thesis focuses on the core issue of “how social entrepreneurs pay attention to dual issues,interpret corresponding information and implement ambidextrous behavior in specific conditions,so as to accelerate the development of social enterprises”.Through reviewing the relevant literature,the research is based on the perspective of entrepreneurs' attention,and relies on the paradox theory and attention-based view.By introducing two typical ambidextrous behaviors of resource acquisition and strategic human resource management as mediator and normal pressure as moderator,this paper constructs a theoretical model of the impact of external and internal attention on social enterprises performance,and puts forward corresponding hypothesis.In order to verify the model,effective 334 data of social entrepreneurs were collected through questionnaire survey,and relevant statistical analysis software were used for testing.The empirical results show that:(1)The relationship between entrepreneur's external attention,internal attention and the performance of social enterprises is significant and positive.Furthermore,the external attention of entrepreneur has a more significant positive impact on social performance,while the internal attention has little difference in promoting social and economic performance.(2)Entrepreneur's external attention can positively affect resource acquisition,but has no significant impact on strategic human resource management.However,entrepreneur's internal attention has a positive impact on both resource acquisition and strategic human resource management.This indicates that the social entrepreneur's focus of attention affects the way of resource acquisition in organizations.And the external attention focus is more conducive to the acquisition of external resources,while the internal attention focus can generate ambidextrous behaviors and establish internal and external resource advantages.(3)Resource acquisition plays a significant positive mediating role between external attention,internal attention and the dual performance of social enterprise.Strategic human resources management plays a mediating role between internal attention and dual performance,and there is no mediating role between external attention and dual performance,which indicates that social entrepreneurs focusing on external attention cannot act on social and economic goals through strategic human resources management but through resource acquisition.Therefore,the focus of internal attention which based on paradox thinking is more conducive to the integration of external and internal resource activities,and promote the overall improvement of social enterprise performance ultimately.(4)The moderating effect of normal pressure is only partially effective.The normal pressure plays a positive role in the relationship between social entrepreneur's internal attention and strategic human resource management,while the moderating effect of normal pressure between external attention and resource acquisition is not confirmed.This thesis analyzes the contradictory tension management of social entrepreneurs from the perspective of attention,and integrates attention focus,paradoxical thinking and ambidextrous behavior to discuss the influence of entrepreneur's attention focus on ambidextrous behavior process and social enterprise performance under the mode of collective action in China,which further enriches the theoretical system of social entrepreneurship to some extent.According to the results of the study,it is recommended that social entrepreneurs should enhance paradox cognition and the “both/and” thinking to cope with organizational tension and improve ambidextrous ability.Entrepreneurs should choose an integrated strategy rather than a separate strategy in the contradiction between dual goals.They should not only pay attention to external affairs and construct external legitimacy,but also manage the cognition and identity of internal stakeholders and build internal legitimacy to ensure the stable operation and sustainable development of the organization.In addition,it is suggested to build an entrepreneurial team to improve the efficiency of attention allocation through team behavioral integration,and finally achieve the dual performance goals of social and economic.At the end of the paper,the limitations of this research and the future research prospects are pointed out.