机会创新性、资源整合与新企业绩效关系

The Relationship among Opportunity Newness,Resource Combination and New Firm Performance

作为创业活动的两个核心要素,机会和资源在创业实践过程中是紧密联系和密不可分的,然而,长期以来二者一直被学者们看作为独立的研究视角。近年来,学者们开始反思并试图从机会和资源的整合视角来揭示创业活动规律。但目前学者们仅从理论视角加以初步探索,相关实证研究仍较为少见。本文从整合视角探讨机会创新性、资源整合(资源拼凑、资源优化)与新企业绩效间的内在关系。通过对175对配对样本(350份问卷)实证研究,结果显示,机会创新性积极影响新企业绩效,资源拼凑与资源优化积极影响新企业绩效,机会创新性积极影响资源优化。然而,机会创新性消极影响资源拼凑这一假设未得到支持。实证分析结果还表明,机会创新性通过资源优化积极影响新企业绩效,即机会创新性将推动新企业通过资源优化的方式整合资源以获取更高的绩效。本文从整合视角深入探讨机会创新性与资源整合的内在关系,揭示创业机会特征、资源整合对新企业绩效的影响,较好地弥补了机会与资源间关系的理论研究不足。研究结果有助于指导创业者在创业过程中,根据所识别机会的创新性程度匹配合适的资源整合方式,以获得更高的绩效回报。

A large number of entrepreneurial practices show that there are great differences in the way that new ventures enter the market at the beginning of the establishment. It is included both in the form of imitation and in the form of providing innovative products or services. This is reflected in the difference of opportunity newness, which is viewed as the value creation potential of the new venture. Meanwhile, scholars and practitioners have formed a consensus that the effective combination of venture resources is a key path to take advantage of different opportunities to realize value, and the differences in the degree of opportunity newness will affect the subsequent resource combination process. As the core elements of entrepreneurship,opportunity and resource are closely related. However,scholars have often seen entrepreneurial opportunity development and resource development as independent research direction, ignoring the relationship between them. Recent years, scholars begin to reconsider about it and try to combine the two respective to reveal entrepreneurial activities. But there is few empirical study, as well as relevant study are still in the theoretical exploration stage. Based on the insufficient theoretical studies, this research takes new ventures under Chinese context as study object, integrating researches on opportunity development and resource development to explore the relationship among opportunity newness ,resource combination and new firm performance. Opportunity newness represents the base of value creation of products or services. But if new ventures want to create real performance, they need to continually acquire the matched resources for opportunities as well as combine them. Although scholars focus on bricolage as resource combination method, we think it is not the only methods that suitable for every new venture to implement their own opportunities. Based on existing research,this paper divides resource combination into resource brieolage and resource optimization. And then, this study constructs the mechanism model of the influence of opportunity newness on new venture performance from a resource perspective, and putting forward the importance of using different ways to integrate resource. Through empirical analysis of 175 matched pairs of samples from Beijing, Shanghai, Changehun and the surrounding areas,we find that opportunity newness,resource bricolage and resource optimization all have positive impact on new firm performance. We also find that opportunity newness has a positive impact on resource optimization. However,the hypothesis that opportunity newness has negative impact on resource brieolage can not be verified. Moreover, we find that resource optimization partially mediates the effect of opportunity newness on new firm performance. The result shows that the more newness the opportunity is, the more new firm would like to optimize resource to gain better performance. Above all, this study explores to reveal the impact of opportunity newness, resource combination on new venture performance from integration perspective to make up for a theoretical insufficiency between opportunity and resource. And the results provide guidance for entrepreneurs. First of all, we find that opportunity newness positively impact performance, so entrepreneurs should try their best to develop more innovative opportunities which mean more potential value for them. Secondly ,choosing suitable resource combination methods to match their opportunity newness is critical for the success of new ventures. For two kinds of resource combination methods, it is difficult to compare without the characteristics of opportunity. Wise entrepreneurs will choose a more appropriate way to combine resources based on the newness of the opportunities. When the newness of opportunity is higher, resource optimization is the suitable methods in this case, exploiting cheap and imperfect alternative resources to bricolage can＇t meet the requirements of resources quality and resource combination efficiency, resulting in missing the opportunities. If the newness of opportunity is lower degree, exploiting brieolage to integrate the cheap resources at hand and take action quickly to put the product or service into the market may help new ventures get good performance.