CEO创业经验与企业资源配置——基于烙印理论的实证研究

CEO’s Founding Experience and Firm Resource Allocation:An Empirical Study Based on Imprinting Theory

本文从“职业流动”视角关注CEO群体一种被忽视的先前经验——先前创业经验,并探讨其对CEO随后战略决策的影响。基于组织烙印理论,本文认为CEO先前创业过程中所经历的强资源约束情境,影响了其信息处理机制,使其偏好新颖的资源配置决策。个体的信息处理机制会在持续接触可靠信息后发生改变,基于此,本文进一步引出CEO行业经验及政府政策导向这两个可能影响烙印衰减及加强的机制,探讨其对CEO先前创业经验影响战略决策的边界条件。研究以2009-2018年中国创业板三个行业企业为样本,对上述观点检验后发现:CEO先前创业次数越多,其所在企业资源配置方式越新颖;CEO在现任企业所处行业的工作经验弱化了主效应关系,而政府鼓励创新创业活动的政策导向则强化了主效应关系。本文识别了中国情境下既有企业与创业企业通过个体职业流动而产生的互动现象,并通过既有企业战略决策阐释了创业烙印的内涵,推进了蓬勃发展的职业流动视角下的创业研究。本文为创业者的职业生涯管理、既有企业的雇佣政策提供实践启示。

With the implementation of the“Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation”policy,entrepreneurship has increasingly become a career choice for many ordinary people.Scholars typically believe that once individuals embark on entrepreneurship,they tend to continue in this vein.Research related to entrepreneurial failure or exit almost exclusively discusses how entrepreneurs can learn from their experiences to seize new opportunities for re-entrepreneurship.However,studies in labor economics show that more than half of new entrepreneurs return to employment within seven years.Current literature offers limited discussion on the phenomenon of entrepreneurs rejoining established firms.This paper focuses on a special case of these former entrepreneurs’career mobility—when they become CEOs of established firms and the impact of their founding experience on these firms.From the perspective of imprinting theory,we argue that individuals’founding experiences have a lasting impact by influencing their information processing mechanisms.Specifically,individuals face strong resource constraints and high uncertainty during the entrepreneurship process.To overcome these constraints,entrepreneurs often creatively utilize resources through effectuation or bricolage.When these individuals enter established firms,the founding imprint continues to influence them.As these former entrepreneurs become CEOs of established firms,their founding imprint leads the firm to make more novel resource allocation decisions.However,“the lasting impact of an imprint does not mean it is forever.”An individual’s information processing mechanisms can change to adapt to subsequently encountered information.This paper examines the influence of two types of key information relied upon by CEOs in the strategic decision-making process—individuals’previous work experience in the same industry and government policy orientations.Industry-specific experience,which brings information about adhering to industry norms and conventions,contradicts the“novel”information of the founding imprint,weakening its strength.In contrast,government advocacy for innovation and entrepreneurship provides consistent information with the founding imprint,prompting individuals to act according to their social identity as entrepreneurs,thereby strengthening the individual’s founding imprint.Based on the above theoretical deductions,we use data from 295 listed companies from 2009 to 2018 and manually collected CEO career history data.We employ a fixed effects model to test the hypotheses.The findings reveal that the more founding experience a CEO has,the more inclined their firm is towards novel resource allocation decisions.However,when CEOs encounter information that contradicts the founding imprint,such as same industry experience,the imprinting effect of CEO founding experience is weakened.Moreover,the“Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation”policy,providing consistent information with the imprint,activates the individual’s founding imprint,leading to a strengthening of the main effect.Finally,the heterogeneity analysis of career mobility patterns,alternative variable measures,and the division of subsamples also support the above baseline research conclusions.Compared to existing literature,this paper contributes in three aspects:First,it depicts the differences between CEOs with founding experiences and other CEOs,describing the interaction between new ventures and established firms through employee mobility,and clarifying the effect of founding imprinting,contributing to the study of entrepreneurship from a career mobility perspective.Second,by exploring the relationship between CEO founding experience and corporate resource allocation decisions,it enriches and expands the research on CEOs and TMT.Third,this paper depicts the dynamic process of organizational imprinting changes of founding imprinting within the Chinese context,portraying the dynamic evolution of individual imprinting,providing empirical evidence for the dynamic perspective of imprinting.