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Plunging into the sea, again? A study of serial entrepreneurship in China

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Abstract

While it stands to reason that serial entrepreneurs—individuals who have founded more than one new venture—should achieve higher levels of success than novices, to date researchers have found little support for this proposition. Is this rather perplexing result only limited to the developed countries in which most research has been conducted? Or is it indicative of a general phenomenon, and hence requesting the need for new theory? We explore these questions by testing the existing theory in two geographic regions in a rapidly emerging transition economy—China. Data from 440 Chinese entrepreneurial ventures suggest that experienced entrepreneurs are better at developing networks, and at managing organizations than novices, but like their counterparts in developed countries, do not necessarily achieve higher levels of venture performance. Implications for theory, as well as for entrepreneurship in the context of transition economies are addressed.

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Notes

  1. To further examine the validity of our survey responses, we checked for the existence of common method bias with Harman’s one-factor test (Aulakh & Kotabe, 1997; Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). The basic assumption of Harman’s test is that common method bias exists if a single factor emerges from the factor analysis that explains a significant amount of the variance in the data. The largest factor emerged in our test accounted for only 21% of the variance. It indicated that there was not a single-factor structure in our dataset, suggesting that common method variance was not a critical concern in the sample.

  2. To measure market opportunities, we asked managers about how their firms perceived their industry environment. There are precedents (Thomas & McDaniel, 1990) as well as strong theory (Lefebvre, Mason, & Lefebvre, 1997) supporting the use of such measure since managers behave in accordance with their perceptions, rather than with ostensibly objective environment. We further controlled industry dummies for potential influence of contextual differences in our statistical analyses. Furthermore, as noted by prior studies (Nath & Gruca, 1997; Peng, Tan, & Tong, 2004), in the absence of archival data self-reported measures were equally acceptable and were often highly reliable with a careful examination of data reliability. As reported in this study, the composite reliability (CR) was 0.87 and Cronbach’s alpha was 0.82 for this construct.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sheldon Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3202 N. Maryland Ave., Milwaukee, WI, 53201, USA

    Sali Li

  2. Management Department, David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, 1645 E. Campus Center Dr., Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    William Schulze

  3. Enterprise Research Institute, Development Research Center of the State Council, 225 Chaoyangmen Nei Dajie, Beijing, 100010, China

    Zhineng Li

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  1. Sali Li
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  2. William Schulze
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  3. Zhineng Li
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Correspondence to Sali Li.

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We would like to thank Mike Peng (Editor-in-Chief) for his interest, encouragement, and hands-on editorial assistance.

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Li, S., Schulze, W. & Li, Z. Plunging into the sea, again? A study of serial entrepreneurship in China. Asia Pac J Manag 26, 667–680 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-008-9102-7

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