创业企业身份构建与创业融资——量表开发及组态分析

The Construction of Entrepreneurial Enterprise Identity and EntrepreneurshipFinancing:Scale Development and A Configuration Analysis

外部融资是创业企业生存和发展的关键。因此,如何获得投资者认同并与之建立长期关系是创业企业亟待解决的问题。基于身份理论,阐释投资者认同的企业身份特征内涵,运用理论编码、探索性/验证性因子分析方法,揭示投资者认同的创业企业身份特征(领导能力、组织能力、行业环境和竞争优势),并构建上述4个维度下8因子创业企业身份量表。依据组态理论,运用fsQCA方法探索综合型、竞争型、开辟型和主导型创业企业身份构建路径。结论拓宽了创业融资研究视角,可为创业融资问题提供细致、全面的解释。

In the post-pandemic era,the downward pressure on the economy is constantly increasing,and employment opportunities are harder to come by.In this context,the Chinese government has firmly emphasized the significance and supported"entrepreneurship to bring employment and entrepreneurship to promote innovation",making entrepreneurship a new engine of the economy.Entrepreneurship financing not only affects the survival of entrepreneurial enterprises,but also determines their future development.However,the phenomenon of information asymmetry between investors and startups has led to difficulties in financing startups.To address this issue,scholars have studied the impact of different corporate factors on entrepreneurial financing.However,as an organic whole,the study of a single factor not only makes it difficult to comprehensively explain the financing problems faced by entrepreneurial enterprises,but also leads to contradictions in the research conclusions.For startups,another issue that needs to be addressed is the integration of identity elements,as many companies are unable to utilize existing identity features to integrate attractive corporate identities.Considering the above context,this article explores the elements of entrepreneurial identity identified by investors from the perspective of identity theory,as corporate identity reflects the"core,enduring,and unique"characteristics of the enterprises.Identity theory makes it possible to provide a more comprehensive and holistic description of entrepreneurial enterprises.Subsequently,on the basis of theoretical literature,this article obtains the initial structure of entrepreneurial identity characteristics identified by investors through semi-structured interviews,open-ended questionnaire surveys,and coding methods.Then it uses exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to extract four corporate identity characteristics that investors identify,including leadership ability,organizational ability,industry environment,and competitive advantages.These four dimensions contain a total of eight factors,with each covering two factors.In detail,leadership ability includes leadership behavior characteristics and entrepreneurial personality traits.Organizational capability includes the characteristics of the internal organization,profit expectations,and incentives.The external environment includes industry characteristics and market environment characteristics.At the same time,a scale of entrepreneurial enterprise identity containing these four dimensions(a total of eight factors)is obtained for investor identification.In order to solve the problem of combining the identity elements of entrepreneurial enterprises,drawing on configuration theory,this article uses the method of fsQCA to analyze the eight factors that affect the identity characteristics of entrepreneurial enterprises identified by investors in the previous text.Finally,four types of entrepreneurial identity construction paths are sorted out,including comprehensive,competitive,pioneering,and dominant;and then,by analyzing these four types of configurations,the article points out the types of entrepreneurial enterprises corresponding to these four paths.Drawing on social identity theory and identity theory,this article employs theoretical coding,factor analysis,and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA)methods to study the characteristics of entrepreneurial enterprise identity identified by investors and the configuration effect of entrepreneurial enterprise identity construction on obtaining entrepreneurial financing.Unlike previous studies based on signal theory or resource theory,this article explores the characteristics of entrepreneurial identity based on social identity theory and identity theory,and provides a measurement scale for entrepreneurial identity recognized by investors.On the one hand,it broadens the theoretical research perspective of entrepreneurial financing.On the other hand,it provides measurement tools for corporate identity research.On this basis,from the perspective of configuration theory,this article explores four paths for building entrepreneurial identity that are conducive to obtaining entrepreneurial financing,breaking through the deficiencies of the existing research that only focuses on the impact of a single factor on obtaining entrepreneurial financing.Then,by comparing and analyzing the antecedent configurations of entrepreneurial financing,it is identified that different types of entrepreneurial enterprises can be combined based on their own factor characteristics so as to fully demonstrate the advantages of enterprises.This also provides a more detailed explanation of the complex relationship between investors and startups.