The Tobacco Industry, Human Resources Strategy, Entrepreneurial Orientation And Performance Study

The Chinese tobacco industry is distinct from other industries for its monopoly and planned-economy characteristics dictated by the state's monopolistic sales and administration over the industry. The tobacco industry plays a critical role in the economic development of Chinese economy. It is of special and important significance, thus receiving a great amount of attention. Consequently, the multi-disciplinary research on entrepreneurship and HR strategy is gaining momentum. The researches focusing on the relations between the HR strategies of domestic tobacco enterprises, the entrepreneurial orientation and corporate performance is still rare. Therefore, this paper, taking Yunnan Province as a case, explores the relations between the HR strategies of domestic tobacco enterprises, the entrepreneurial facilitation and corporate performance, in order to illuminate on and provide theoretical and empirical support to the government for its guidance and support for the development, the self-initiated management and innovations of tobacco enterprises.The research was carried out in two phases. The first phase is the literature review, of which the main purpose is to review and summarize the key literature related to the research topics. The literature review discovers that the government policies and practices is an important factor affecting the entrepreneurship. It also indicates that HR strategies can be divided into a variety of categories, each exerting different influence on entrepreneurship; and that the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation have been clearly laid out, and the positive influence on performances by entrepreneurial orientation have been partially validated. The second phase is the empirical research, which centers around the impacts by government policies and HR strategies on entrepreneurial orientation, and the relations between performance and entrepreneurial orientation in the context of tobacco industry. This phase entails collection of 162 effective questionnaires.Through the empirical research, the author draws the following conclusions: (1) the government policy support bears direct impact on entrepreneurial orientation. There are significant positive correlation between the innovations and pioneering behaviors and the funding/technical support and the secondary entrepreneurial policy. However, the government policy exerts no significant influence on risk mitigation; (2) The corporate HR Strategy exerts direct influence on the entrepreneurial orientation. In particular, the HR strategies of accumulative and assistive nature exert positive influence on the innovation and pioneering behaviors in the entrepreneurial orientation, and no significant influence on the risk mitigation; (3) The entrepreneurial orientation exerts direct influence on corporate performance. Specifically, the innovation and pioneering behaviors exerts positive influence on the financial performance and growth performance of an enterprise.