心理因素联动对创业者决策逻辑的影响——一个基于QCA方法的研究

The Impact of Psychological Factors on Entrepreneurs’ Decision Logics:A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

近年来关于创业者决策逻辑的研究吸引了创业研究领域学者的广泛关注,然而从心理学角度出发探索心理因素对创业者决策逻辑的影响的研究刚刚起步。因此,通过定性比较分析的方法(QCA)探索不同心理学因素的组态对创业者决策逻辑的影响后发现:(1)创业者的因果推理逻辑明显时,其形成机制存在一条路径;(2)创业者的效果推理逻辑明显时,其形成机制分为3条路径,且与因果推理逻辑形成机制组态的核心条件存在明显差异。最后对结果进行讨论,并提出研究的局限性和未来研究展望。

How to survive and develop in the turbulent environment is the primary problem that new ventures need to think of.For entrepreneurs,they need to make sound decisions in a highly uncertain environment in order to cope with the impact from the market environment.In turn,the new ventures can"survive"and seek further development on this basis.In her pioneering research,Sarasvathy developed the understanding of the decision logic of entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial process and proposed the effectuation theory,which was summed up by research on expert entrepreneurs.It is about how entrepreneurs make effectual decisions under uncertainty.However,does it mean that entrepreneurial experience is a necessary antecedent for using effectuation logic to make decision?For ordinary entrepreneurs,are there any other factors that will affect their decision making by using effectual logic?In recent years,more and more scholars in the field of entrepreneurship research have realized that the combination of psychological research and entrepreneurship research is conducive to the further supplement and improvement of existing research theories.Therefore,from the perspective of psychology,this study explores what kind of decision logic entrepreneurs choose to make decisions in different positive psychological states.Specifically,these positive psychological factors include self-efficacy,optimism,passion and perspective-taking.Different from traditional regression analysis and structural equation model research methods,Qualitative Comparative Analysis method integrates the interdependent condition variables into the form of configuration.It examines the set relation of different configurations to the result variables and reveals the complex relation between the antecedent condition and the result.In this study,60 entrepreneurs in China are investigated through questionnaires.By means of qualitative comparative analysis,fsQCA software is used to analyze and explore under what circumstances optimism,self-efficacy,perspective-taking and entrepreneurial passion cause entrepreneurs to use different decision logic.The research results show that there is no single core condition that will prompt entrepreneurs to use causal or effectual logic.Specifically,causation has one formation path and effectuation has three formation paths.The path of causation is a configuration composed of variables lacking positive psychology,while the effectuation paths are configurations composed of multiple positive psychology conditions.The contribution of this study is to deepen the study of antecedents of entrepreneur decision logic.Based on existing research,this study explores the antecedents of entrepreneurs decision logic from the perspective of psychology and confirms the effectual logic is not unique to expert entrepreneur.Affected by positive psychology,ordinary entrepreneurs can also use the effectual logic to make decisions.In this study,the causal complexity is fully considered,and the conditional combination of entrepreneur’s decision logic is analyzed from the perspective of qualitative comparative analysis.The perspective of configuration is also taken to explore the influence of antecedent condition combination on the decision logic of entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial context.Although it is found that self-efficacy and perspective-taking play an important role in the decision logic selection of entrepreneurs,they are only limited to specific configurations instead of playing an isolated role.