新创企业的即兴行为如何转化为惯例:创业学习与交互记忆系统的作用研究

在动荡的环境下,"即兴"是创业过程中的一种普遍行为,其在组织中的潜在价值吸引了越来越多的学者的关注。与此同时,"惯例"作为组织内部的一个核心要素,学者们已经开始意识到惯例在新创企业中的重要性。但是目前鲜有研究从本质上探讨新创企业即兴行为和惯例之间的关系。文章基于创业情境,首次验证了新创企业即兴行为和惯例之间的关系,并检验了创业学习和交互记忆系统在其中扮演的角色。运用162个新创企业数据进行实证分析发现,即兴行为对新创企业的惯例具有显著的正向影响;创业学习的两个维度,利用式创业学习和探索式创业学习,均在其中发挥了部分中介的作用;交互记忆系统在即兴行为和惯例的关系中具有显著的负向调节作用;同时,交互记忆系统显著调节利用式创业学习和探索式创业学习的中介作用。研究结论对新创企业惯例形成的研究具有重要的理论意义,对新兴经济背景下新创企业的生存和发展亦有重要的实践意义。

How do Improvisations of New Ventures Translate into Routines: Research on the Role of Entrepreneurial Learning and Transactive Memory System

In a dynamic environment, the unpredictability and high volatility of the environment make new ventures face greater challenges, and new ventures need to maintain a high degree of vigilance and flexibility. Improvisation is a common behavior in the process of entrepreneurship, and its potential value in the organization has attracted more and more scholars' attention. It can effectively help new ventures deal with unexpected events,and plays a vital role in the survival of new ventures in highly volatile environments. At the same time, routines are core elements within the organization, and scholars began to realize the importance of routines in new ventures. Inertia as a source of routines can make organizational activities reproducible and reliable in an uncertain environment, it can make more organization's controllable time to respond to changes, reduces operational risks, and maximizes the organization's competitive advantage. Routines also serve as a source of organizational changes that help organizations adapt to changes in an turbulent environment, so organizations with significant inertia can survive and often have excellent performance. However, little research currently explores the relationship between improvisation and routines of start-ups. From the perspective of knowledge,learning is an important means to knowledge renewal. As an important knowledge resource within an organization, the formation and updating of routines are inseparable from the learning process of the organization. Entrepreneurial learning is a process in which start-ups acquire and develop entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and abilities in order to create a new venture or promote its growth. Existing researches also show that routines are the result of organizational learning; organizations learning can update and refine group routines and optimize their knowledge to overcome organizational challenges. Simultaneously, improvisation is one of the sources of learning, and it can promote the learning process of the organization. Through the emergence of organizational improvisation, enterprises can immediately respond to external changes, reallocate resources and roles, and acquire new knowledge through learning. And reasoned improvisation provide the conditions for capability learning, so that international new ventures can survive easily. In addition, a transactive memory system (TMS) can help develop a good learning environment through social exchange and knowledge disclosure. It can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of learning. Therefore, based on these, this paper examines the relationship between improvisation and routines of start-ups, and examines the role of entrepreneurial learning and TMS. Using empirical research on a sample of 162 new ventures, the results suggest that improvisation is positive to routines of new ventures. Both of entrepreneurial learning’ dimensions, exploitative entrepreneurial learning and exploratory entrepreneurship learning, play a mediating role in the relationship between improvisation and routines. And the relationship between improvisation and routines are moderated by TMS. At the same time, the mediating role of entrepreneurial learning are also moderated by TMS. The conclusion of this study not only has important theoretical significance for the research on the formation of new ventures’ routines, also has important practical significance for the survival and development of new ventures in the emerging economies.