企业家社会资本对企业战略决策质量的影响:以决策理性为中介——基于中国企业的实证研究

An Empirical Research on the Relationship between Entrepreneur Social Capital and Strategic Decision Quality:from the Perspective of Decision Rationality based on the Chinese Firms

在关于战略决策质量影响因素及企业家对战略决策质量的影响研究方面,现有文献较少关注社会资本的影响及其具体影响路径和机制。本文提出了企业家社会资本、决策理性和决策质量间关系的理论模型,基于258家中国企业样本数据的研究结果表明,企业家社会资本的制度性维度和市场性维度以决策理性为中介,对战略决策质量产生积极影响。本研究在一定程度上丰富和补充了高阶理论和战略决策过程理论,提高了现有理论的解释力,可为中国企业家构建社会资本以提高战略决策质量的实践提供一定参考。

Drawing on the information-process views and social capital theory, this paper aims to examine three sorts of relationships/or effects：the relationship between entrepreneur social capital and decision rationality, the relationship between entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision-making quality, and decision rationality ＇ s intermediary effects between the entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision-making quality. The existing literature in the stream of the strategic decision-making process study focus on environment, organization, strategic decision-making process characteristics, decision-making patterns, etc, when they study the influencing factors of strategic decision quality. Some entrepreneur theory and TMT theory literature focus on entrepreneurs or top management team＇ s demographic, personality characteristics and cognitive characteristics, overlook the entrepreneur＇ s ability to build/maintain the social network and to obtain information or other resource from it, so the existing theories can＇ t properly explain why the strategic decision-making quality among the enterprises still have great differences in a similar environment, using similar decision-making models and made by managers having little different individual characteristics. Usually entrepreneurs have an important impact on strategic decision-making quatlty because mey act as participants,initiators, leaders in the strategic decision process. Based on the fully reviews of the existing literature, this study put forward a series of hypothesis about the relationships between entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision quality. In order to exam hypothesis, this study designs the variables＇ measurement scales and the questionnaire and collects a 258 sample data of Chinese firms. The results of empirical studies show that：First, entrepreneur social capital has a significant and positive impact on the strategic decision-making quality. Generally, when entrepreneurs are dealing with a strategic decision problem, if their environmental cognitive ability can be higher, and use more information, has a smaller information gap, use higher quality information and more alternatives, they would have a higher quality strategic decision. This study suggests that entrepreneur social capital can reduce the information gap, improve the quality of information, improve entrepreneurs＇ cognitive ability to environment, thereby reduce the uncertainty of the strategic decision, increase the probability of the entrepreneurs rightly judge the relationship between the environmental factors, and improve strategic decision-making quality, the empirical results support the hypothesis. Second, Entrepreneur social capital has significant and positive impact on the degree of rationality. In ac cordance with the views of the limited rationality decision theory, it suggests that decision makers are ＂limited rationality＂ between entirely rational and irrational, entrepreneurs act as a leader and a participant in the strategic decision process, although entrepreneurs want to be rational and make better decision, but they can only be ＂limited rationality＂. The differences in entrepreneur social capital may lead to the important differences in the informationbased, knowledge-based and resource-based when they deal with strategic decision problem, and show different ra tional degree in the strategic decision process, entrepreneurs who have higher social capital would show higher rational degree ,the empirical analysis results also support the hypothesis. Third, decision rationality is an important intermediate variable between entrepreneur social capital and strategic decision quality. This study can enhance the explanatory power of the existing theories,and provides a reference and practical guidance for the Chinese entrepreneurs.