Entrepreneurship, a critical source of economic development, requires cultivation to carry it forward. From the perspective of culture, which is the root of thought and attitude, this paper lists the successful entrepreneurs both from China and other countries whose management practices have been influenced by Lao Tzu’s philosophy of management, discusses the convergence of that philosophy with entrepreneurship, and highlights the decisive influence of entrepreneurial mindset. It also explores the cultural pathway to cultivation of entrepreneurship, that is, it addresses the shaping of world outlook of “the unity of humanity and nature” （天人合一） and “something and nothing creating each other”（有无相生）.The paper considers the life outlook of “taking hearts as my own, selflessness defines me”（以百姓心为心，无私成其私 ), the value of “respecting and valuing morality”（尊道贵德） and “staying free from arbitrariness”（自然无为）. Following the requirements of the times and regional cultural characteristics, this paper refines the entrepreneurship structure model at four levels: mission-driven responsibility mindset, awe-inspiring arbitrariness-free mindset, symbiotic and win-win altruism mindset and progressive mindset. The objective is to help to promote the creative transformation of contemporary values of traditional culture.
In the traditional Confucian gentleman culture, Chinese entrepreneurs have cultivated unique mindset and have harnessed such mindset in managing the government-business relationship, which is strategically critical for innovation. This paper builds a theoretical framework of Confucianist entrepreneurship—collaborative innovation—enterprise performance, studies the impact of such entrepreneurship on enterprise performance. From the perspective of collaborative innovation, internal innovation mechanism has been studied, and the moderating effect and conditional boundary of the cordial and clean government business relationship have been further validated. A survey of 1,437 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) made in China in 2019 found that: (1) Confucianist entrepreneurship has a significant positive impact on promoting the enterprise performance; (2) collaborative innovation has demonstrated the action mechanism of Confucianist entrepreneurship on enterprise performance; (3) the cordial and clean government-business relationship positively moderates entrepreneurship on enterprise performance. It also has the positive intermediary effect on collaborative innovation between Confucianist entrepreneurs and enterprise performance. This study has not only expanded the scope of research on entrepreneurship and Confucian culture and ethics, but has also extended the integration of entrepreneurship and collaborative innovation to the micro level, providing theoretical and practical inspiration for the innovation practices of small and micro-sized (SMEs) enterprises.
Entrepreneurship has always been a key production factor in sustainable innovation and development of enterprises. However, individual entrepreneurship in the industrial economy era no longer satisfies the digital-age innovation demands of “being quick, stable and lasting,” revealing that the characteristics of digital-age entrepreneurship are crucial to understanding sources of continuous innovation. Therefore, this paper adopts grounded theory and qualitative research on four companies, and finds that digital innovation uncertainty is the key to the emergence of entrepreneurship, the social attributes of digital technology. The adaption of enterprise organizational structure triggers the transmission of entrepreneurship from the individual level to the organizational level, thus forming an ethics system that is dependent on entrepreneurs’ behavioral process and that widely exists in organization groups. Organizational entrepreneurship consists of market adaptation, value orientation, self employment and community sense. The research is helpful in clarifying the relationship between digital technology and entrepreneurship, in enriching the connotation of digital-age entrepreneurship, helping managers to inspire potential entrepreneurship of organization members, and promoting continuous innovation of enterprises.
The modern equity incentive system, which takes shareholders’ interests first as the logic of governance, is based on material reward and short-term behavior, making it difficult to fundamentally build an economic interest community between enterprises and employees. How to avoid opportunistic behavior in equity incentive and stimulate employees’ prolonged sense of organizational identity for enterprise sustainability is an important governance problem of modern enterprises. Based on the theory of social embeddedness, this study uses constructing grounded theory to explore the incentive theory of Qiaojiazihao, which means an exceptional family business owned and run in Shanxi Province but well known throughout China by a family surnamed Qiao in the Qing Dynasty. Qiaojiazihao takes the Confucian community thought as its foundation of social values, the Confucian concept of righteousness and interests as its business ethics, and the social factors, such as emotion and trust, are embedded in its economic organization. The labor sharing incentive thus forms the pathway to Geo-cultural community-social identity community-economic interests community. On this basis, it abstracts the internal mechanism of value generation-system coupling-interest strengthening as the logic of the community based labor sharing incentive of Chinese classical enterprises. This study deepens the understanding of the equity incentive system of Chinese classical enterprises, and is enlightening for revising the institutional logic of rational calculation of equity incentive based on material interests and improving corporate governance and employee shareholding methods from the perspective of social embeddedness. Therefore, this study is helpful to understand the role of employee incentive in securing for employment stability, comprehensiveness, and loyalty.