Business Area Changes and Entrepreneurial Persistence in Ecology- and Food-Related Industries: Knowledge Heterogeneity and Emotion Perspectives

Hongmin Chen,Fu-Sheng Tsai,Han-Chang Ling

doi:10.3390/su10040929

Abstract

Entrepreneurs’ changes to different business areas can be viewed as shifts in entrepreneurial knowledge domains (e.g., from restaurant to food waste processing firm as an ecological helping business). From a sample of 73 representative entrepreneurs, we present a study of the impact of such area changes on the persistence of entrepreneurship (i.e., the degree an entrepreneur remains in entrepreneurial activities). Furthermore, two mediators, managerial experience and insecurity, and two moderators, positive and negative affect, were proposed and examined to make a more comprehensive theoretical inference of the relationship between area difference and persistence. The results revealed that, counter-intuitively, area difference was significantly and positively associated with entrepreneurial persistence. The mediation effects of managerial experience and psychological insecurity were also confirmed. However, only the moderation of positive affect was effective. Based on the knowledge heterogeneity and entrepreneurial emotion perspectives, academic and practical implications for inter-temporal dynamics of entrepreneurship are discussed.

Highlights

The knowledge-based economy rewards professionals who exploit experience and expertise for exploring new opportunities to create valued businesses [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Because our study focused on business area differences in ecological industries that pre-set a difficult situation for researchers to collect data from entrepreneurs, we adopted a purposive sampling approach
We found that area differences are positively associated with entrepreneurial insecurity (β = 0.07, p < 0.1), confirming our Hypothesis 1 (H1), which argues that the greater the area difference, the greater the persistence

Summary

Introduction

The knowledge-based economy rewards professionals who exploit experience and expertise for exploring new opportunities to create valued businesses [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The decisions and actions of an entrepreneur often leaves great impact on the developmental trajectory of a new venture [10]. In such a context, knowledge is vital for the entire entrepreneurial life cycle, in that valuable knowledge facilitates entrepreneurial decisions and action, and may be a source of entrepreneurial competitive advantage [11]. Knowledge is vital for the entire entrepreneurial life cycle, in that valuable knowledge facilitates entrepreneurial decisions and action, and may be a source of entrepreneurial competitive advantage [11] Against this backdrop, many entrepreneurs cannot realize their dreams in their initial operating business area. The gap between knowledge domains of the old and new areas impose challenges in entrepreneurship implementation

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion