科研管理 ›› 2019, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (11): 196-205.

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

企业家情怀与创新投入关系的实证研究

王飞绒,赵鑫,李正卫   

  1. 浙江工业大学管理学院,浙江 杭州310023
  • 收稿日期:2018-07-15 修回日期:2018-12-12 出版日期:2019-11-20 发布日期:2019-11-25
  • 通讯作者: 赵鑫
  • 基金资助:
    国家社会科学基金项目:“创业者个性特质、社会网络属性与小微企业成长研究”(项目编号:15BGL022,2016.01-2019.12)。

An empirical study of the relationship between entrepreneurial mentality and innovation input

Wang Feirong, Zhao Xin, Li Zhengwei   

  1. School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, Zhejiang, China
  • Received:2018-07-15 Revised:2018-12-12 Online:2019-11-20 Published:2019-11-25

摘要: 企业家情怀是否会影响企业的创新投入?本文主要依据计划行为理论,从企业家情怀与创新投入的关系入手,构建了企业家情怀经由风险承担与压力应对影响企业创新投入的概念模型,并提出了相应的假设。利用183份有效问卷进行了实证分析。研究結果表明,企业家情怀能够促进企业的创新投入,风险承担和压力应对在情怀到创新投入的影响路径中起到部分中介作用。论文将企业家情怀纳入创新研究,补充和完善了企业创新动机理论,对企业家情怀的研究也有效拓展了企业家精神理论的内容,论文同时也从企业家层面和政府层面提出了管理启示,最后对未来的研究进行了展望。

关键词: 企业家情怀, 风险承担, 压力应对, 创新投入

Abstract: In recent years, many enterprises have faced difficulties under the pressure of external competition and internal transformation. They try to get out of the predicament through innovation, but many of them have lost the passion for innovation. What is the driving force of innovation investment? Technology-push, demand-pull or the interactive forces cannot fundamentally explain the innovation behavior of different enterprises. It is necessary to find the prime driving force from the entrepreneurs who make the decisions of firms. The entrepreneurs’ mentality reflect the values and the inner spiritual pursuit of entrepreneurs, which can clearly explain the innovation behavior of enterprises. Entrepreneurial mentality is similar to the spirit of entrepreneurship but not completely consistent. As early in 2001, Peter F. Drucker proposed that "entrepreneurship" has a significant impact on technological innovation of enterprises. At present, the academia has different connotations of entrepreneurship, but the same is the spirit of innovation and adventure. Entrepreneurial mentality exemplifies the higher level pursuit and spirit of entrepreneurs. It is based on the society, people, stakeholders, and environment, emphasizes the sustainable development of the company. Therefore, this paper uses the special perspective of entrepreneurs to study the relationship between mentality and innovation investment.
Innovation is the source of corporate growth and sustainable development. Innovation investment is the basis and important driving force. However, innovation investment has the characteristics of long cycle, high risk and great uncertainty of results. From idea generation, R&D investment, manufacturing, marketing to the final acceptance of the market, the failure of any step in the entire innovation process will lead to failure of innovation activities. Therefore, when entrepreneurs decide to make innovative investment, they are confronted with risks and pressures. In addition, different entrepreneurs’ risk-taking and stress-response capabilities are different, which will eventually lead to differences in the decision-making of innovation investment. Current literature lacks of research on risk-taking and stress-response from the perspective of managerial characteristics. Therefore, based on the theory of planned behavior, this paper draws on Li Zhengwei’s definition of entrepreneur’s mentality, and holds that entrepreneurs’ mentality includes five dimensions: lofty aspirations, benevolent altruism, indifferent fame & wealth, environmental friendliness and craftsman complex, then constructs a conceptual model of entrepreneurial mentality affecting innovation investment through risk-taking and stress-response, corresponding assumptions is put forward.
This paper uses 183 valid questionnaires for empirical analysis. The results show that entrepreneurs’mentality can promote innovation investment, risk-taking and stress-response plays a part intermediary role in the path from mentality to innovation investment. From the empirical results, we can draw the following conclusions: (1) As mentality is a kind of value pursuit with the interests of society in mind, entrepreneurs with high mentality tend to be indifferent to personal gains and losses, and take social value as the main spiritual pursuit and behavioral goals, focusing more on the long-term and sustainable development of enterprises; (2) Because of the high-level spiritual pursuit contained in the entrepreneur’s mentality, entrepreneurs have strong determination to cope with and take risks, thus promote innovation investment. Therefore, considering the driving force of innovation investment, we cannot only focus on the tax policy, company size, shareholding structure and foreign direct investment amount proposed by traditional research perspective. These external influence factors can’t really explain the innovation investment of enterprises. While the entrepreneur’s personal spiritual pursuit and behavioral goals are the fundamental driving force to truly promote the innovation investment of enterprises.
The theoretical contribution of this research is as follows. First, this paper incorporates entrepreneurialmentality into innovation research, supplements and perfects the theory of innovation motivation. In the past research, motivations were simply summarized as technology-push, demand-pull, or the interactive forces of the two, but these factors simply stay on the surface, entrepreneurial mentality is the embodiment of the entrepreneur’s deep pursuit and spirit. This kind of internal value is spontaneous and conscious for innovation, which brings the long-term and sustainable impact of the enterprise far more than the external driving forces. Second, the study of entrepreneurial mentality effectively expands entrepreneurship theory. Entrepreneurship is a collection of entrepreneurial spirit and skill. Previous studies on entrepreneurship were not systematic, especially the definition of connotation was not uniform. Most of the existing researches believe that innovation is the core content and soul of entrepreneurship, and the spirit of adventure is an important representation of entrepreneurship. Therefore, current descriptions of entrepreneurship still remain at the surface level, while the research of entrepreneurial mentality deepens the connotation of entrepreneurship, it is an important supplement to the theory of entrepreneurship.
This study has several management implications. First of all, for entrepreneurs, they must constantly improve their spiritual cultivation, and strive to improve risk-taking and stress-response capabilities. Nowadays, technology and environment are changing faster than ever, enterprise are undergoing rapid changes from all sides. As the soul of the enterprise, entrepreneurs must also have the spirit, ability and professionalism to help the growth, development of the enterprise, and finally lead to the success of enterprises. The more complex the business environment, the higher requirements the entrepreneurs need. Stress-response and risk-taking ability, lofty aspirations, benevolent altruism, indifferent fame & wealth, environmental friendliness and craftsman complex all require entrepreneurs to have a broader mind and vision. Entrepreneurs should consciously integrate personal pursuit, enterprise development and national need. Secondly, for the government, it is necessary not only to remove obstacles from the top-level design, but also to focus on the guidance and cultivation of entrepreneurs at the spiritual level, to promote the transformation of entrepreneurial values, and to vigorously publicize and propagate entrepreneurial spirit andmentality. Entrepreneurs’ quality is not only effectively combined with corporate development at the micro level, but also with social progress, such as the realization of Chinese dream at the macro level. In this process, it is especially important to create an environment for entrepreneurs to grow up healthily. On the other hand, it is crucial for all parties to work together to build an innovative atmosphere under the new normal of China’s economy, which can stimulate the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs for innovation, and let entrepreneurship and mentality bloom in a new era.

Key words: entrepreneurial mentality, risk-taking, stress-response, innovation input