经历越多必然创新吗?——私营企业家职业经历多样性、政策感知与企业创新

Is innovation inevitable with more experiences:Diversity of private entrepreneurs′career experience,policy perception and firm innovation

企业家基于独特的企业家精神促进企业创新。党的十九大以来,尤其是后疫情时代,企业家在推动经济社会高质量发展的作用得到前所未有的重视。本文基于第十次与第十一次中国私营企业微观调查数据,实证分析了企业家职业经历多样性对企业创新的具体影响与经济后果,并进一步分析了私营企业家的创新政策感知在企业家职业经历多样性与企业创新之间产生的中介效应。研究结果表明:(1)企业家职业经历多样性对企业创新意愿与创新投入产生正向促进效应,且企业家体制内职业多样性与跨界职业经历对企业创新投入影响更为明显;细分企业家经历类型的分析结果表明企业家党政机关经历、国企经历、农村工作经历、从军经历与海外经历分别对私营企业创新投入产生正向促进效应;(2)企业家职业经历多样性对企业家政策感知产生显著的促进效应,且企业家政策感知在企业家职业经历多样性与企业创新之间产生显著的中介效应,政策感知在私营企业家职业经历多样性与企业创新之间发挥了创新政策资源传导的桥梁作用;(3)异质性分析结果表明,私营企业家职业经历多样性对企业创新的驱动效应在无政治关联的企业以及行业竞争强度更高的情境下更为明显。本文的研究丰富了企业创新的驱动因素的研究,有助于我国在经济社会转型过程中更好地发挥企业家精神的作用,从而实现高质量发展。

Since the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the role of entrepreneurs in promoting high-quality economic and social development, especially in the post-COVID era, has received unprecedented attention. Especially in recent years, the digital technology under the new round of scientific and technological revolution further provides an enabling basis for entrepreneurship. A large number of digital firms promote digital innovation and transformation based on their unique platform leadership and digitalization leadership, which has become a new driving factor for enterprise innovation. From the existing research point of view, academia has produced a lot of research on how to drive enterprise innovation performance and sustainable innovation behavior. However, the existing research overlooks the relationship between entrepreneurial experience, especially pre-entrepreneurial experience, and enterprise innovation. From the perspective of entrepreneurial experience, rich pre-entrepreneurial experience helps to form a complex and diversified enterprise operation and management knowledge structure, promotes the diversity of private enterprise innovation culture, and brings richer social network capital for enterprise innovation source.Therefore, this paper mainly focuses on private firms as the research object. Private firms are different from state-owned ones. Their innovation strategy decisions are more derived from the will and motivation of individual entrepreneurs. Private firms are still the main force of innovation and entrepreneurship in China, and occupy an important position in the process of driving the development of private sector in China. However, in the process of reform of China′s market-oriented system, the legitimacy of private firms′ innovation and entrepreneurship is not achieved overnight, but through a progressive acquisition process. Compared with state-owned firms, the legitimacy of private firms in the process of frequent institutional changes is still in a relatively weak state, and the scale and anti-risk capabilities of private firms are relatively weak. It is more necessary for private entrepreneurs to accurately perceive and dynamically respond to government policies in order to make long-term oriented enterprise innovation strategic decisions. Based on this, this paper focuses on the diversification of the sources of private entrepreneurs in China in the environment of institutional diversification. From the earlier “xi1hǎi”(literally “go to the sea”, it refers to the wide-spreading trend in which a large number of Chinese governmental workers resigned and plunged into the commercial tide to risk their fortunes in the 1990 s) to today′s “grassroots entrepreneurship”, this not only reflects the gradual growth of private entrepreneurs and its being recognized by the institution legitimacy, but also reflects the problems of private entrepreneurs in the process of gradually changing to the market-oriented institution logic, that is to say, they have rich career experience before starting a business, including career change, cross-industrial and cross-organizational type and cross-regional work experience. Based on the data of the 10 th and 11 th micro survey of private firms in China, this paper empirically analyzes the important impact of the diversity of entrepreneurs′ career experience on enterprise innovation. Specifically, based on the existing questionnaire items in the comprehensive survey database of China′s private firms, this paper constructs the diversity index of entrepreneurs′ functional experience, and considers that the definition of entrepreneurs′ work in the above organizational types(Party and government institutions, state-owned and collective firms, private firms and foreign-funded firms, military) and geographical types(rural work, overseas work) is 1, and then compares the different types of work. The work experience of the same organization type and regional type is accumulated to depict the diversity of entrepreneurs′ career experience. This paper categorizes enterprise innovation into three types: enterprise innovation investment willingness and enterprise actual innovation investment including technology innovation investment and product R&D investment, respectively explores the impact of the diversity of private entrepreneurs′ career experience on enterprise innovation, and further based on the mediating effect test method of Baron and Kenny(1986) and the bootstrap method. This paper analyzes the mediating effect of private entrepreneurs′ perception of innovation policy between the diversity of entrepreneurs′ career experience and enterprise innovation.In summary, this study has three management and policy implications. For private entrepreneurs, they should examine their own knowledge base and social network resources, especially their professional work experience before venturing into private firms, and accurately grasp the positive effects of diversified professional experience on the innovation and development of firms. For entrepreneurs with the orientation of innovation, they need to pay attention to different types of organizations and regions and different types of work experience, based on career mobility and crossover work experience, constantly enhance their own venture capital, and then provide social network and knowledge base. For policy makers, on the one hand, they need to build an institutional and social platform for entrepreneurs′ growth, pay attention to the unique value of entrepreneurs with diversified professional and work experience in the process of innovation and entrepreneurship, and, on the other hand, continue to optimize the policy and institutional environment of private firms to alleviate the problems of weak innovation resources and insufficient innovation investment of private firms based on the principle of institutional legitimacy and competition neutrality. Innovation policy of inclusive private firms can promote private firms to play a greater role in promoting the transformation and upgrade of regional economy and high-quality development.