企业家的变革开放性如何影响战略?——意愿和能力情境的家族企业战略变革研究

How Entrepreneurs' Openness to Change Affect Strategy:Research on the Initiative Strategic Change of Family Business

基于资源观和利益相关者理论,文章探讨了家族企业中企业家的变革开放性对战略变革发起的影响机制,尤其是研究了长期导向在二者间的中介作用以及家族承诺和家族所有权的调节作用。实证研究发现:第一,家族企业中企业家的变革开放性对战略变革发起具有显著的正向预测效果,长期导向在其中起到了中介作用;第二,家族承诺作为控股家族经营过程中的意愿,能够对变革开放性与长期导向之间关系起到显著的正向调节效应;第三,家族所有权水平体现了家族对企业的控制能力,能够对长期导向与战略变革之间关系起到显著的正向调节效应。文章对于家族企业战略领导者特质与战略行为关系的研究有一定的理论意义和实践指导价值。

In the context of transition in economy,Chinese enterprises face both challenges and opportunities in growth. Only with active strategic change can firms react to the transition efficiently,and achieve permanent operation and sustainable growth. Strategic change is discontinuous change of current content and scope of strategy in the purpose of adjusting to environmental change. The strategic change could be regarded as the important source of corporate sustainable competitive advantage,which facilitates the firm’s long-term survival. Family firm, as a global phenomenon, is usually criticized for its conservative in strategy,risk aversion and uncertainty avoidance. Such characteristics often play as obstacles for firm’s strategic development. Previous researches have already recognized that a firm’s strategic choice is a reflection of top leader’s value and cognition. In a family firm,the founding entrepreneur or the head of the family plays a dominant role on strategies. Therefore,the entrepreneur’s openness to change is a vital cause of initiative strategic change launching. Based on resource-based view and stakeholder theory,this paper analyzes the function mechanism of entrepreneurs’ openness to change on initiation of strategic change’ especially explores the mediating role of long-term orientation,as well as the moderate effect of family commitment and family ownership. The empirical results show that: first, the entrepreneurs’ openness to change in the family business has a significant positive correlation effect for initiation of strategic change, and long-term orientation plays a mediating role. The entrepreneur’s openness to change could effectively influence the strategic change because the leader, which has higher openness to change, possesses unique believes,knowledge and value distinguishing from other top managers. In those family firms leaders’ mind, it is not an optimal choice to maintain the firm status quo. They are dedicated to breaking the organization inertia,pursuing the organization innovation and change. Furthermore,the individuals with higher openness to change are more likely to try new methods, think in new ways,and embrace the irregular ideas and challenges. The activeness of such leader offers the source of organization renewing. In addition, the entrepreneurs with higher openness to change have more discretion in strategy choice,which could impose more influence on the organization and overcome the obstacles in the way of strategic change. Second,family commitment,as the controlling family’s willingness in business process,strengthens the positive relationship between openness to change and long-term orientation. Third, family ownership reflects the family’s control capability, strengthens the positive relationship between long-term orientation and initiation of strategic change. This paper contributes theoretically and practically to the research on the relationship between strategic leaders’ trait in family businesses and strategic behavior. We follow the streamline in the literature of willingness and ability’s effect on strategy choice and extend the frontier of the family business research. In practice level,our finding suggests that higher level of family commitment and family ownership could better facilitate the long-term oriented strategic change in family firms. Unlike some policies promoting the de-familylize in family firms or decouple the family-firm system, we propose that the family firms have unique advantage in transition of economy and could be a vital and competitive organization form. In the macro context of China’s economy transition,it requires more friendly and supportive institutional environment to cultivate family firms with higher openness to change.