Entrepreneur’s beliefs in negotiable fate and serial entrepreneurship = 企業家認命變運與連續創業

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is crucial to maintaining economic vitality, especially serial entrepreneurship. In view of the importance of serial entrepreneurship, scholars have devoted lots of efforts to investigate the serial entrepreneurship. However, existing studies mainly focus on the impact of entrepreneurs’ previous entrepreneurial experience on subsequent entrepreneurship. Few studies have focused on the impact of entrepreneurs’ personal characteristics on serial entrepreneurship, especially entrepreneurs’ interpretation of the external environment. This study aims to fill the gap by examining the impact of entrepreneurs’ negotiable fate on their serial entrepreneurship. I have designed two studies. The first study is a case study, which explores the antecedents of entrepreneurs’ negotiable fate. I found that the early sufferings of entrepreneurs contributed to the formation of negotiable fate. The early disaster experience imposed many restrictions on entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs still alleviate constraints through serial entrepreneurship, and finally form the view of negotiable fate. The second study is an empirical study, which explores the impact of entrepreneurs’ negotiable fate on serial entrepreneurship. The study found that negotiable fate has a positive effect on serial entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneurial resilience mediates this relationship. Specifically, there are three findings. First, entrepreneurs who hold the view of negotiable fate are less likely to change the industry in which they start a serial entrepreneurship. This is because negotiable fate improves the resilience of entrepreneurs. Second, negotiable fate has a positive effect on entrepreneurial performance by improving entrepreneurial resilience. Third, the industry change in serial entrepreneurship is not conducive to entrepreneurial performance. The findings of this study have made essential contributions to the literature on serial entrepreneurship and negotiable fate. First of all, this study enriches the research on serial entrepreneurship by demonstrating the effect of negotiable fate on the performance and industry choice of serial entrepreneurship. This study echoes the call to pay more attention to the personal characteristics of continuous entrepreneurs. Second, I found that changing industries is not conducive to entrepreneurial performance, which provides evidence for the learning effect of entrepreneurial experience. Finally, this study reveals that negotiate fate changes the resilience of entrepreneurs, and then affects their entrepreneurial decisions, which has made an important contribution to the literature on negotiable fate.