Science Research Management ›› 2021, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (12): 36-44.

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A study on the influence mechanism of dual involvement of tech-entrepreneurship on entrepreneurial growth

Wan Xiaole1, Zhou Jian2, Li Qianqian1   

  1. 1. School of Management, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, Shandong, China; 
    2. School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266061, Shandong, China
  • Received:2019-09-23 Revised:2020-03-04 Online:2021-12-20 Published:2021-12-17

Abstract:     As an important carrier of promoting the transformation of scientific research achievements and accelerating the transformation and upgrading of industries, scientific and technological startups play an important role in promoting employment and activating regional economic development. However, due to the iterative upgrading of technology and the constant change of market demand, the process of technological entrepreneurship is full of uncertainty and risk, and due to the existence of the weakness of new innovation, technological entrepreneurship is often faced with various entrepreneurial difficulties, which requires entrepreneurs to have a strong sense of identity for their entrepreneurial activities to continuously overcome various entrepreneurial challenges. Research and practice show that entrepreneurial involvement, as an entrepreneur′s sense of identity for existing work, reflects the entrepreneur′s emotional state for entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurs with a high degree of entrepreneurial involvement are often full of interest in entrepreneurial activities, and will spontaneously generate a sense of identity for entrepreneurial activities, and actively seek ways to solve the entrepreneurial dilemma on the basis of this recognition, so as to realize the development of entrepreneurship.
  In this paper, the research object is located in the entrepreneurs of science and technology startups, and the research data comes from the science and technology new venture parks in the eastern provinces of China. In order to facilitate the filling and answering of the questionnaire, this paper designs an electronic questionnaire. A total of 300 questionnaires were sent out. After eliminating the high rate of missing and invalid questionnaires, 193 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective recovery rate of 64.33%.
  Based on the involvement theory and the perspective of entrepreneurial learning, this paper tentatively divides the entrepreneurial involvement of technology entrepreneurs into two dimensions: Entrepreneurial context involvement and entrepreneurial industry involvement. It constructs a mechanism model of the influence of entrepreneurial dual involvement on entrepreneurial growth with entrepreneurial learning as the intermediary variable and absorptive capacity as the adjustment variable, and uses structural equation model to test the survey data. The empirical results show that: Entrepreneurial context involvement and entrepreneurial industry involvement can significantly promote entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial growth level; entrepreneurial learning mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial dual involvement and entrepreneurial growth; absorptive capacity has a positive regulatory role between entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial growth, while absorptive capacity also enhances the intermediary role of entrepreneurial learning.
   The research of this paper has the following three theoretical contributions: first of all, it puts forward the duality of entrepreneurial involvement of technology entrepreneurs, and promotes the contextual involvement theory related research. From the perspective of the development of involvement theory, it was initially applied to the field of employees′ work. Researchers think it has strong situational nature from the psychological and cognitive perspectives. In this paper, combined with the role identification of technology entrepreneurs, according to the difference of role nature, entrepreneurial involvement is divided into two dimensions: Entrepreneurial context involvement and entrepreneurial industry involvement, which enriches the research of involvement theory in entrepreneurial context. Secondly, from the perspective of entrepreneurial learning, this paper discusses the mechanism of the dual involvement of technology entrepreneurs on entrepreneurial growth. As a unique cognitive way, entrepreneurial dual involvement can only affect the level of entrepreneurial growth through specific behaviors. Following the research logic of "impact behavior output", this paper proposes that entrepreneurial learning, as an act of accumulating knowledge and resources, can play a role of bridge and link between entrepreneurial dual involvement and entrepreneurial growth, thus opening up the entrepreneurial dual involvement and entrepreneurial growth. The action path of involvement provides a rich vision for understanding the action mechanism of involvement theory. Thirdly, it discusses the regulatory effect of absorptive capacity on the relationship between entrepreneurial learning and entrepreneurial growth. The existing research thinks that start-ups need to pay attention to the mining and optimal allocation of the value of resources at hand, but there is no corresponding discussion on how to mine and allocate. As a kind of dynamic knowledge and resource utilization ability, absorptive capacity can accelerate the internalization of new knowledge and resources into the core competence of enterprises in the process of entrepreneurial learning. Research shows that when the absorptive capacity of enterprises is high, the transformation effect of entrepreneurial learning is also good, and the intermediary utility of entrepreneurial learning is enhanced, highlighting the important position of deep mining and optimizing the allocation of existing resource value.
The conclusion of this paper has important practical value in guiding scientific and technological entrepreneurial activities. Firstly, under the background of the continuous expansion of entrepreneurship and innovation, science and technology-based entrepreneurship has gradually become the mainstream. There are two kinds of positive psychological cognitive activities for scientific and technological entrepreneurship, namely, the involvement of entrepreneurial context and the involvement of entrepreneurial industry, which make them have unique entrepreneurial advantages. The industry and entrepreneurs need to constantly stimulate and maintain their cognitive advantages through various ways, such as actively participating in industry association exchange activities, participating in entrepreneurship training camps, the competent government departments can speed up the role transformation of scientific and technological workers by creating an entrepreneurial environment, enhancing their sense of situational representation, and accelerating the transformation of scientific research achievements from the laboratory to the market. Secondly, technology entrepreneurs should pay attention to the important role of entrepreneurial learning. In the current trend of specialization and complexity of technology entrepreneurial activities, more and more rely on the whole and team, rather than the individual entrepreneurs can complete. Technology entrepreneurs need to pass their professional technology, cognition and experience to entrepreneurial enterprises through effective channels, and entrepreneurial learning has been passed on resources and knowledge. It plays a key role in the process. Technology entrepreneurs need to constantly enhance their entrepreneurial learning ability in entrepreneurial practice. Through experience learning, trial and error learning, cognitive learning and other ways to achieve the accumulation of entrepreneurial knowledge and resources, so that technology entrepreneurs can overcome the weakness of new innovation as soon as possible and form the core ability of heterogeneity. Thirdly, absorptive capacity not only identifies and obtains external resources, but also emphasizes the creative allocation of resources at hand. At present, science and technology startups are faced with the weakness of new creation, such as the shortage of resources. Many entrepreneurs are keen on obtaining resources, adopt radical ways, even give up the control right of enterprises to get as many resources as possible, but due to the lack of absorption and integration ability, the start-ups fail with serious social consequences.

Key words: entrepreneurial context involvement, entrepreneurial industry involvement, entrepreneurial learning, absorptive capacity, entrepreneurial growth