How Coping Combination Affects Innovation Ambidexterity in Business Failure Situations.

Jinliang Chen,Song Lin,Feng Jiang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01409

Jinliang Chen, Song Lin + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01409

Copy DOI

Abstract

As an effective cognitive and behavioral strategy, coping helps to overcome negative events. Although coping and its effects have been widely studied in psychology, little is known about the combination of entrepreneurs’ coping and its connection with firms’ innovation ambidexterity. To fill these gaps, in this study, the authors collected 106 samples through two serial-wave surveys of the Bohai Economic Rim in China and tested the theoretical hypotheses using polynomial regression with response surface analysis. The results showed that alignment coping combination enhanced innovation ambidexterity by reshaping an entrepreneur’s cognitive structure. Misalignment coping combination was found to enhance innovation ambidexterity by eliciting an entrepreneur’s different types of information processing systems. This study contributes to the literatures of coping, innovation ambidexterity, and upper echelons theory from the entrepreneurial cognition approach.

Highlights

Just as a coin has two sides, business failure is simultaneously associated with negative and positive effects (McGrath, 1999; Ucbasaran et al, 2013)
Dependent variable: innovation ambidexterity; significance level: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; a1 = b1 + b2, a2 = b3 + b4 + b5, a3 = b1 – b2, and a4 = b3 – b4 + b5, where b1 is the coefficient for Loss orientation coping (LOC), b2 is the coefficient for Restoration orientation coping (ROC), b3 is the coefficient for LOC squared, b4 is the coefficient for LOC × ROC, b5 is the coefficient for LOC squared
The correlation analysis revealed that LOC and ROC were positively correlated with innovation ambidexterity

Summary

Introduction

Just as a coin has two sides, business failure is simultaneously associated with negative and positive effects (McGrath, 1999; Ucbasaran et al, 2013). Scholars have extensively studied the use of coping in mitigating the negative consequences of business failure that could overpower and jeopardize the positive aspects (Shepherd, 2003; Singh et al, 2007; Shepherd et al, 2011). To review the current scholarly investigations, two research gaps remained. The first gap is that the current scholarly knowledge mainly centers on coping at the individual level while relatively ignoring the organizational level. Following the Shepherd (2003), for example, an increasing number of studies investigate entrepreneurs’ individual recovery from the grief triggered by business failures (Shepherd and Patzelt, 2018). There is still a dearth of research that systematically outlines the effect of entrepreneurs’ coping, the thoughts of coping’s effect at the organizational level was highlighted in literature (Carter et al, 1996; Shelton, 2006)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion