Research On The Impact Mechanism Of Goal Orientation On Entrepreneur's Decision Making Logics

Uncertainty is one of the main characteristics of the entrepreneurial environment faced by entrepreneurs in recent years.Entrepreneurs live in an uncertain world and need to make effective decisions under uncertainty.Sarasvathy,a professor at the university of Virginia's Darden school of business,proposed the theory of effectuation,which has been shown to have a positive impact on the new venture performance as an effective decision-making theory for entrepreneurs under uncertainty.In recent years,the research on the effectuation has been deepened,but there is relatively little research on how the effectual logic is formed from the perspective of psychology.Therefore,this study take perspective of psychology,focuses on the formation mechanism of entrepreneur effectual logic.The effectuation theory points out that entrepreneurs mainly follow two kinds of decision logic,namely the effectual logic and the causal logic.This study integrates the perspectives of motivation and behavior to explore how the two kinds of decision logic are formed and how the environmental uncertainty affects the choice of entrepreneurs for the two kinds of decision logic.Based on this,this study proposes three research questions:(1)whether goal orientation affects the formation of decision logic of entrepreneurs.(2)whether entrepreneurial learning mediates the relationship between goal orientation and decision logic of entrepreneurs.(3)whether environmental uncertainty can moderate the mediating effect of entrepreneurial learning.On the basis of the above three questions,this paper proposes the research hypothesis and constructs the research model.This research adopts the method of questionnaire survey to collect research data.Through entrusting a professional market research company to collect samples,203 valid questionnaire samples were collected.The research hypothesis was tested after the sample data passed the reliability and validity test.The empirical results show that learning goal orientation and performance approach goal orientation positively affect effectuation and causation,while performance avoidance goal orientation negatively affects effectuation and causation.Entrepreneurial learning plays a mediating role between goal orientation and decision logic of entrepreneurs.Environmental uncertainty positively moderates the mediating role of entrepreneurial learning in the path of effectuation.This study analyzes how goal orientation and entrepreneurial learning affect the decision logic of entrepreneurs and the impact of environmental uncertainty on their decision logic choices.The results deepen the study on the antecedents of effectuation,demonstrate that effectuation is not the unique decision logic to expert entrepreneurs,and provide a theoretical basis for entrepreneurs to use effectual logic to make decisions.