Creative entrepreneurs' artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness: the guanxi network perspective

Abstract

PurposeThe dichotomy of views on “arts for arts sake” and “art must meet commerce” elicits the clash about how creative entrepreneurs encounter the dilemma of fulfilling personal satisfaction and chasing entrepreneurial aspiration along the entrepreneurial process. It is argued whether or not creative entrepreneurs can integrate artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness to disentangle the conflict and tension between art and commerce in the guanxi embedded culture context. The complex guanxi ties of creative entrepreneurs identified as bonding ties with families, bridging ties with friends and social ties with colleagues are presumed to activate personal and social values.Design/methodology/approachThe research design consists of two stages: face-to-face interviews and empirical survey. A total of four successful local creative entrepreneurs in craft arts were interviewed and asked questions related to their source of creative inspiration, market alertness and value creation. Findings derived from interviews enrich the questionnaire development of the empirical survey. The survey was conducted to realize the social phenomenon of creative entrepreneurs' guanxi, cognitive process and satisfaction with Taiwan's creative industry context. In total, 318 creative entrepreneurs’ responses were collected and analyzed by using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsResults suggest that guanxi networks lead to the acquisition of various social resources that are conducive to alertness in entrepreneurial opportunities and stimulate artistic creativity, which in turn gratify creative entrepreneurs' senses of entrepreneurial satisfaction with life, work and social contribution, as well as achieve higher entrepreneurial aspiration, perceived as social recognition and meaning of work.Practical implicationsResults of this study enrich the understanding of creative entrepreneurs and their awareness of balancing opportunity alerting and artistic creativity while starting creative businesses. Diverseness and closeness of guanxi networks can fill the gap between art and market and further pave the way to winning aspiration.Originality/valueThis paper advances the existing literature on creative entrepreneurship by adopting guanxi network theory to explore entrepreneurs' cognitive process in the linkage of artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness and their mediating effects on perceived entrepreneurial satisfaction and aspiration.