摘要1
创业己成为当今中国经济和财富增长的重要推动力。随着中国对外幵
发程度和市场化程度的提高,越来越多的人选择创业。另一方面,每年涌
向就业市场的庞大的毕业生大军与有限的工作岗位之间的矛盾也让将很大
一部分人推向自主创业的道路。遗憾的是,社会资源的欠缺让绝大部分创
业者都走向了失败,创业者如何通过社会关系网络获取资源成为新企业是
否能成功生存并发展下去的关键问题。
社会资本理论已经被学者们广泛地应用到了创业研究领域。特别是关
系社会资本中强弱联系的研究一直都是学术领域的热点内容。然而,在阐
述强弱联系的作用中,不同的学者提出了相悖的结论。另一方面,信任作
为关系社会资本中重要的维度,却很少受到学者的关注。本文认为,区分
幵创业的不同阶段,并且揭开信任在创业中的作用是解决争议的关键问题,
因此,本文基于大量的文献阅读后提出,强联系与弱联系在创业机会识别
和创业机会幵发中发挥差异化作用,同时,在强弱联系与创业机会之间关
系中,情感信任和认知信任也发挥着重要的差异化作用。具体的说,本文
假设强联系和弱联系均正向影响创业机会识别和开发,其中,强联系对机
会识别和开发的作用是通过情感信任的中介作用完成的,而弱联系对创业
机会识别和开发的影响受到了认知信任的正向调节作用。
为了验证理论假设,本文对239位创业者进行了实证调查。并用层级
回归分析法验证了各个变量之间的因果关系。结果发现,(1)强联系和弱
联系对创业机会识别均起到了重要的促进作用;(2)强联系对创业机会开
发具有积极影响,但是弱联系对机会幵发不产生作用;(3)强联系对创业
机会识别和开发的影响均是通过情感信任所中介的;(4)认知信任正向调
节了弱联系与创业机会识别之间的关系。随后,本文进一步解释了弱联系
对机会幵发不起作用以及认知信任在机会幵发中不发挥调节作用的主要原
因。最后,本文还讨论了研究的理论和实践意义,局限以及未来的研究方
向。
关键词:联系强度,情感信任,认知信任,创业机会识别,
创业机会开发
ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship has become an important driving force that gives a great
contribution to wealth growth of Chinese economy. With the degree of opening
of Chinese market, more and more people choose to start new businesses. On
one hand, the contradiction between the huge army of graduates flock to the job
market every year and the limited position providing force large part to start
their own businesses. Unfortunately, duo to the lack of social resources, the vast
majority of entrepreneurs are leading to failure. Acquire the access to resources
through the network of social relations become the key issue whether the new
enterprise can successfully survive and develop.
Social capital theory are widely applied by scholars to the field of
entrepreneurship research. In particular, the relationship between the strong and
weak ties in the social capital research has always been a hot academic field
content. However, to explain the role of strong and weak ties, different scholars
give the controversial conclusions. Moreover, as an important dimension of
relational social capital, trust received little attention. This paper argues that to
solve the controversy between strong ties and weak ties, we have to distinguish
the different stages in the entrepreneurship process and uncover the role of trust
in the business. Therefore, based on the literature review, we argue that strong
ties and weak ties play the differential role in the process of entrepreneurship.
Besides, in the relationship between the ties strength and entrepreneurial
opportunities, affective trust and cognitive trust also plays an important and
differential role. Specifically, this article assumes that strong ties and weak ties
are positive influence on the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial
opportunities, where strong ties effect on opportunity discovery and
development is completed mediated by affective trust and the effect of weak ties
on the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities are positively moderated by
cognitive trust.
In order to verify our theoretical assumptions, we conduct an empirical
survey of 239 entrepreneurs. We used hierarchical regression analysis to verify
the causal relationship between the various variables. Results show that (1) the
strong ties and weak ties play an important role in promoting opportunity
discovery; (2) strong ties are positively influence the entrepreneurial
opportunity exploitation whereas weak ties show no influence; (3) strong ties
effect on opportunity discovery and development is completed mediated by
affective trust; (4) the effect of weak ties on the discovery of entrepreneurial
opportunities are positively moderated by cognitive trust. Subsequently, we
further explain why weak ties do not work in entrepreneurial opportunity
exploitation. Finally, this paper also discusses the theoretical and practical
significance of the study, limitations and future research directions.
Key words: ties strength, affective trust, cognitive trust, entrepreneurial
opportunity discovery, entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation