A Study On The Effeft Of Team Heterogeneity On Entrepreneurial Decision-making

Nowadays, entrepreneurial activity is a very active phenomenon in the social and economic life. But, in the new era, the traditional ’individual entrepreneurs’ mode cannot to meet the new requirement no long and challenges,’entrepreneurial team’ has been gradually replaced ’entrepreneurial individual’ and become the entrepreneurial subject in today’s economy and society. Nevertheless, due to the impact of the complexity and dynamics of enviromen, entrepreneurial teams have also encountered a variety of problems and difficulties in the process of carrying out entrepreneurial activities. Entrepreneurial teams are facing great challenges in the construction and management process. At present, there still lacks a more systematic research on entrepreneurial team at home and abroad, the research on entrepreneurial team is a topic of highly theoretical value and practical significance.Firstly, the paper consolidates and reviewes the domestic and foreign relevant concepts and theories in the field of team entrepreneurship, decision-making and team interaction, and summarizes the related literature. Then, by using the questionnaires, data analysis and other empirical methods, the paper analyzes and verifies the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity structure dimensions, the relational model of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making and the relational model of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity, risk perception or team interaction and entrepreneurial decision-making. Finally, the following innovative achievements are made.(1) Carried out the definition and dimensions-building of the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity, and verified the effect of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity on entrepreneurial decision-making. Based on the earlier scholars’ definition about team heterogeneity, the concept of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity was defined. Meanwhile, this paper proposed and demonstrated the three dimensions structure of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity, namely gender and age heterogeneity, skills and functional heterogeneity and values heterogeneity. Through theoretical analysis, survey methods and structural equation modeling analysis, the significant positive effect of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity on entrepreneurial decision-making. And in each entrepreneurial team heterogeneity dimension, the gender and age heterogeneity has significant positive impact on entrepreneurial decision-making, the values heterogeneity has relatively weak negative impact on entrepreneurial decision-making, and the skills and functional heterogeneity has no significant on entrepreneurial decision-making.(2) Verified the mediating effect of risk perception between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making. Entrepreneurial activity is an extremely risky activity, entrepreneurial decision-making is also a risky decision. The research results show that the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity has significant negative influence on risk perception, the gender and age heterogeneity and the skills and functional heterogeneity have significant negative impact on risk perception, the values heterogeneity has significant positive impact on risk perception. Risk perception also has significant negative influence on entrepreneurial decision-making. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurial team’s risk perception has mediating effect between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making.(3) Verified the mediating effect of entrepreneurial team interaction between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making. Interaction among team members will have an important impact on the entrepreneurial decision-making, and the research focuses on the role of team communication and team conflict between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making. The research results show that the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity has significant positive influence on team communication and team conflict, and gender and age heterogeneity has significant positive impact on team communication and has no significant impact on team conflict, the skills and functional heterogeneity has no significant impact on the team communication and has significant positive impact on team conflict, the values heterogeneity has significant negative impact on team communication and has significant positive impact on team conflict. Team communication has significant positive effect on entrepreneurial decision-making, however team conflict has no significant effect on entrepreneurial decision-making. Team communication has mediating effect between entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and entrepreneurial decision-making.(4) Constructed the entrepreneurial decision-making process model based on the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity. In the entrepreneurial decision-making process, team members, financial, material resources, knowledge, skills, and support of the external environment are very important constituent elements of entrepreneurial decision. At the same time, based on the Timmons’ risk decision-making process model of entrepreneurial team, the entrepreneurial decision-making process into five stages, namely the generation of entrepreneurial willingness and the evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities, the development of business plan, the access to capital and other resources, the implementation of entrepreneurial activity, and the feedback and improvement. These five stages are mutual influenced and restrained. Finally, based on the impact of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity on constituent elements of entrepreneurial decision-making, risk perception, and team interaction, the paper builds the entrepreneurial decision-making process model based on the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity.