Coworkers’ Entrepreneurial Performance and Employee Entrepreneurship: A Social Learning Perspective

Abstract

How employee entrepreneurship spreads through interpersonal influence (interaction between coworkers and employee) in organization becomes an important issue which remained unsolved. Drawing on social learning theory, the purpose of this study is to test and verify how former coworkers’ entrepreneurial performance impact current employee entrepreneurship, what role does employee’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy play and what the role will be when it is vary in the similarity of entrepreneurial resources between coworkers and employee and employee’s risk propensity. Surveys data collected from 218 full-time employees working in China at two different time points with three-week interval. This study found that employee’s entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the positive relationship between coworkers’ entrepreneurial performance and employee entrepreneurship intention. And this mediating effect was exacerbated by the similarity of entrepreneurial resources and employee’s risk propensity. Moreover, a joint moderated mediation model of similarity of entrepreneurial resources and employee’s risk propensity was supported. Theoretical contributions and practical implications were discussed.