Research On Entrepreneurial Mentoring Strategy And The Relationship With Woman Entrepreneurial Competency: Under A Change Situation

Mentoring program plays a very important role in employees' ability development. Mentoring program, as an effective tool of training new employees, not only improves the working performance, but also increases the job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Nowadays, for the rapid development of economy, more and more women entrepreneurs emerge. Therefore, entrepreneurial capability becomes a very important research topic since it is a critical determinant of success. This thesis focuses on the application of mentoring to women entrepreneurs and takes a deep hard look at the mentoring strategy under the condition of entrepreneurship, on the basis of former literature. The thesis aims to answer the three following questions: (1) What is the construct of entrepreneurial mentoring strategy and what kinds of functions it has. (2) What impacts the entrepreneurial mentoring strategy will have on women entrepreneurial capability. (3) How entrepreneurial mentoring strategy influence the women entrepreneurial performance. To answer these three questions, the following studies have been conducted.In study 1, the construct of entrepreneurial mentoring strategy was developed. This study used in-depth interview method to interview 12 women entrepreneurs and have a thorough understanding of the mentoring they had received from their entrepreneurial mentors. Content analysis was conducted for coding the interview materials. The results showed that the entrepreneurial mentoring strategy is a multi-dimensional construct which included entrepreneurial task mentoring and psychosocial mentoring.In study 2, the construct of entrepreneurial mentoring strategy was verified by means of empirical method. The original questionnaire was developed by referring both from previous research and the results of in-depth interview conducted in study 1. A large scale of samples was collected to verify the reliability and validity of the construct. On the stage of scale refinement, exploratory factor analysis was conducted in a sample of 93 individuals. The final scale included 27 items with eight dimensions. On the stage of scale verification, another independent sample of 156 women entrepreneurs was employed to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the entrepreneurial mentoring strategy is based on a second-order eight-factor model. The eight-order factors included resource sharing, experience transferring, risk provention, network building, role model, pyshological counseling, value acctepance and emotion interaction. And the second-order factors were entrepreneurial task mentoring and psychosocial mentoring.In study 3, the relationship among entrepreneurial mentoring strategy, women entrepreneurial competencies and woman entrepreneurial performance were examined. The sample of 156 women entrepreneurs was employed to conduct a quantitative analysis. The results showed that both of the two kinds mentoring strategy have a positive impact on woman entrepreneurial competencies, and in the relationship, change task features play a role of moderators. In the examination of the relationship between entrepreneurial mentoring strategy and woman entrepreneurial performance, the results showed that the entrepreneurial task mentoring has a positive impact on financial performance and psychosocial mentoring has a positive on career satisfaction. Meanwhile, woman entrepreneurial competencies play the role of mediator.At the final part, the main research findings of this dissertation were systematically summarized. The theoretical progress and practical implications were discussed in relation to limitation and direction for future research.