New Chinese Entrepreneurs: Perspectives of Confucian Attributes and Social Settings

New Chinese Entrepreneurs: Perspectives of Confucian Attributes and Social Settings

Connie Zheng, Bai-Xuan Wang, Mei-Chih Hu
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8462-1.ch002
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Abstract

This chapter uses a qualitative approach to explore the characteristics of newly-bred Chinese entrepreneurs among 14 technology-based companies in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Internal and external perspectives on studying entrepreneurship were adapted to examine personality attributes and the impacts of social settings on shaping the characteristics of modern Chinese entrepreneurs. The findings show that Chinese entrepreneurs were strongly influenced by the Confucianism, in which learning was upheld as a key to develop internal innovative capabilities for sustaining enterprise growth in the dynamic environment. Chinese entrepreneurs leading technologically innovative companies were also found to be visionary, but with less risk taking; they had exceptional networking capability and political dexterity to build strong relationships with government, industry and community. The tie between the Confucian entrepreneurial attributes and strong government support appears to enable the ‘innovation in Chinese way'. Implications of these results are discussed.
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Chinese Entrepreneurs And Entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur is defined as ‘a person starts a new business or establishes a new organisation’ (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p. 218). In a more complex term, Schumpeter (1934) described an entrepreneur as someone who introduces new consumers and new markets, creates new methods of production, and establishes new organisation or industry. In essence, entrepreneurs are the ones who initiate change and exploit changes as opportunities, so are often connotative to the ones with ‘creative destruction’ in mind (Drucker, 1999).

In general, entrepreneurship is defined as the act of being an entrepreneur. However, entrepreneurship appears to be more than just an entrepreneur taking the act to ‘start a new business’. It is involved a series of processes by which massive changes take place in the economic system through many innovative individuals who identify opportunities, allocate resources, and create value (White, 1995; Liao & Sohmen, 2001; Watson, 2010).

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