Research On The Influencing Mechanism Of Pre-existing Friendship On Entrepreneurial Performance

New ventures are rarely the product of a solo entrepreneur operating in isolation.On the contrary,the majority of new ventures are usually created in the form of teams,and entrepreneurship is essentially a collective activity.The percentage of new ventures started by entrepreneurial teams is steadily increasing,and younger entrepreneurs are especially likely start their ventures with their friends.For example,Google,Facebook and Microsoft are all created by friends.The impact of these partnerships on start-ups is legendary and enduring.Although the phenomenon of doing business with friends is very common,the academic community has not yet deeply discussed how this pre-existing friendship will affect team behavior and entrepreneurial performance.Therefore,this paper discusses the topic of pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial teams,which has not been fully explored.Based on the attention-based view of the firm,this study believes that the pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial teams will further affect entrepreneurial performance through the speed/comprehensiveness of strategic decision-making,Team professional heterogeneity moderates the relationship between pre-existing friendship and strategic decision-making process.Through the multi-point questionnaire survey of 72 entrepreneurial teams,this study uses spss25 0、Mplus8.2.The software analyzes the collected data and tests the hypotheses proposed by the research,The conclusions are as follows:(1)the pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team has a significant positive impact on the speed of strategic decision-making and a significant negative impact on the thoroughness of strategic decision-making;(2)the speed and thoroughness of strategic decision-making play a dual intermediary role between the pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team and entrepreneurial performance;(3)The professional heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team is an important boundary condition that affects the pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team to play a role in entrepreneurial team.Specifically,under the low level of team professional heterogeneity,the double-edged sword effect of pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team is stronger.When the level of team professional heterogeneity is high,the positive path of pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team(pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team-speed of strategic decision-making-entrepreneurial performance)and negative path(pre-existing friendship of entrepreneurial team-thoroughness of strategic decision-making-entrepreneurial performance)are weakened.In general,according to the attention-based view of the firm,this study explores the mechanism of the influence of pre-existing friendship on entrepreneurial performance through strategic decision-making process,which has certain theoretical and practical contributions.Theoretically,this study expands the scope of the literature on entrepreneurial teams and friendship,and clarifies how pre-existing friendships in entrepreneurial teams affect decision-making process and entrepreneurial performance.In practice,this study helps entrepreneurs and organizational managers better understand the benefits and risks of pre-existing friendship.