1. Introduction
Entrepreneurship has become an important driving force for the economic development and social progress throughout the world, especially for some main countries in Asia. For example, China’s premier, Mr. Li Keqiang firstly put forward the concept of “Mass entrepreneurship and innovation” in 2014 Davos World Economic Forum, and more and more people have begun to start their own businesses and to make innovations. According to South Korean Strategy and Finance Minister (2017), South Korean government would set up a 10 trillion won ($8.97 billion) venture fund as a part of a support package for founding startups, of which purpose is to cultivate new growth businesses amid heavy economic pressure from emerging economies such as China. With this trend, academic research on entrepreneurship has become increasingly important for scholars.
Theoretically, entrepreneurial behavior stems from entrepreneurial intention. Many scholars have confirmed the connection between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior. For example, Krueger and Carsrud (1993) believed that entrepreneurial intention is the “best single predictor” of entrepreneurial behavior, which could effectively guide potential entrepreneurs to gradually identify and use entrepreneurial opportunities. In addition, entrepreneurial intention can also help to identify individual’s long-term entrepreneurial tendencies. Therefore, entrepreneurial intention has already become a key research branch in the research field of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial intention itself is also affected by many other factors. One important factor is people’s attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Previous researchers provide sufficient evidence for this point. According to Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which was proposed by Ajzen (1991), behavioral attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control are three main factors that influence on people's behavioral intentions. As for the specific field of entrepreneurship, Francisco and Chan (2009) also proved that personal attitudes toward start-up affects Entrepreneurial Intention.
Now that entrepreneurial intention can be influenced by people’s entrepreneurial attitudes, then what factors determine people’s entrepreneurial attitudes? We believe that it has both theoretical and practical significance to find out the new determinants which affect individual’s entrepreneurial attitudes and explain them scientifically.
Many existing researches have shown antecedents of entrepreneurial attitudes in terms of individual factors, environment and entrepreneurial education. For example, Athayde (2009) summarized four main individual factors which impact on college student’s entrepreneurial attitudes, those are creativity, internal control, achievement needs and leadership. Shane (2003)’s research has shown that people’s entrepreneurial attitude is also influenced by external environment. Garavan and O’Cinneide (1994) believed that entrepreneurial education can generate important entrepreneurial spirit, thus, affect people's entrepreneurial attitudes and motivations. Similarly, Krueger (2010) also believed that entrepreneurial education and training are very important for individual’s entrepreneurial behavior, especially for developing their entrepreneurial thinking. Besides that, other scholars also hold that human capital and other demographic variables can also affect people’s entrepreneurial attitudes (Francisco & Chan, 2009).
However, recent studies barely have discussed the relationship between work values which is individual’s most essential features and entrepreneurial attitudes. Many previous studies have proved that work values have an impact on employees' work attitudes (Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001), and existing studies also proved that work values affect an individual's career choice preferences (Nair & Ghosh, 2006). Thus, we believe that work values may also affects individual’s entrepreneurial attitudes. Therefore, this study explores the relationship between individual’s work values and entrepreneurial attitudes, and try to explain how different dimensions of work values affect people’s entrepreneurial attitudes.
In addition, we expect that another possible contingent factor affecting the relationship between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes is whether people think they have opportunities and possibilities for entrepreneurial success. Some scholars mentioned that entrepreneurial opportunities are a feasible, profitable and potential business chance which include providing an innovative new product or service to the market, or improving an existing product or service, or imitate a profitable product or service in an unsaturated market (Singh, 2001).
Following this path of thought, we found other academic statement. It says whether products and services can be accepted by the market depends on the selection of distribution channels of the new ventures are appropriate or not. For example, according to Friedman and Furey (2001), any distribution channel must match the characteristics of the customers’ purchase behavior, and then allow them to buy the product at proper time and place. Therefore, we speculate that if potential entrepreneurs could identify the possible distribution channels for new ventures, it means that they can also identify entrepreneurial opportunities, as given this expectation of entrepreneurial prospects, it will also affect their entrepreneurial attitudes.
Therefore, this study also aims to discuss how entrepreneurial opportunity identification plays a moderating role on the above relationship. Finally, this process would be illustrated and explained by establishing a theoretical model. Previous classic theories, such as career anchor theory (Schein, 1974) as well as personality-job fit theory (Holland, 1958) has shown that individuals who have different values, traits and personalities would have their own corresponding career choice that matches their personal characteristics. Following this path of thought, we regard entrepreneurship as a special career choice, thus, propose the following viewpoints:
First, we examined the mechanisms, that is, how positive or negative entrepreneurial attitudes are generated from the basis of human behavior’s regular pattern and the perspectives of work values. We believe that one of the main reason why people hold various attitudes in the face of entrepreneurship is that they have 3 different dimensions of work values. Specifically, for those who with so-called “comfort and security” work value, they tend to hold more negative attitudes toward entrepreneurship. In contrast, for those who with “competence and growth” and “status and independence” work values are tend to hold more positive attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Second, inspired by the trait activation theory and other related previous studies, we also proved different moderating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification on the relationships respectively between comfort & security, competence & growth, status & independence and entrepreneurial attitudes.
2. Literature Review and Hypothesis
2.1. Work Values
Scholars have proposed various definition of work values from different perspectives. All of them can be divided into two major categories: The first category is defined from the perspective of evaluation criteria. For example, Elizur (1984) pointed out that work value is an individual’s intrinsic ideology, which belongs to a kind of value judgments by individuals on certain outcomes obtained from the work environment, and which could have a direct impact on individual behavior. Does (1997) believed that work values are those evaluation criteria related to the work itself and the work environment. People use these criteria to distinguish between right and wrong, evaluation and preference.
The second category is defined from the perspective of individual’s demand. For example, Super (1980) indicated that work value is the work preferences and goals pursued by individuals in order to satisfy their own internal demands, which could influence individual’s work attitudes and behavior. Roe and Ester (1999) believed that work values are the ultimate state or behavioral beliefs which people could obtained from a job.
Because this study is mainly conducted in the context of China, we believe that individual mainly views work behaviors and results from the perspective of evaluation and judgment in the Chinese context. So work values are the criteria by which individual evaluate the importance of work behavior and outcomes. Correspondingly, many Chinese scholars prefer Does (1997)’s definition and developed this term. Therefore, on the basis of Does and other Chinese scholar’s point of view, this study defines the concept of "work values" as: the judgment criteria existing in the individual's deep insides, which are used to evaluate the importance of work behavior and work results.
Manhardt (1972) divided work values into three dimensions: Comfort and security, competence and growth, status and independence. Super (1980) developed a work value scale consisting of 15 items including three dimensions: intrinsic value, external work value and extrinsic reward. Previous scholars generally accepted Manhardt's classification and measurement scale, so this study also chose this classic division for work values.
2.2. Entrepreneurial Attitudes
The concept of entrepreneurial attitudes stems from the definition of attitudes. According to Robbins and Judge (2008), attitudes refer to people’s evaluative statements about objects, people, and events. This kind of statement can be either endorsed or opposed, and it reflects a person's inner feelings about an object. Breckler (1984) pointed out that attitudes is mainly composed of three parts including cognitive component, affective component and behavioral component. In general, the various components of attitudes should be coordinated. Once the three are not coordinated, the emotional components tend to occupy a dominant position, thus, determine the basic orientation and behavioral tendencies of attitudes.
As the field of entrepreneurial research expends, scholars use different forms of terminology to define entrepreneurial attitudes (i.e., attitudes toward entrepreneurship, personal attitudes toward start-up, etc.). At present, there are basically two types of view on the structure of entrepreneurial attitudes. The first one is that entrepreneurial attitude is a single-dimensional structure of emotional or affective response. Ajzen (2001) indicated that entrepreneurial attitude is the positive or negative degree of an individual (i.e., individual's perception and preference) pointing to entrepreneurship, and the stability of attitudes can be transformed under specific conditions. Based on Ajzen’s statement, Francisco and Chan (2009) also believed that attitudes toward start-up refers to the degree to which the individual holds a positive or negative personal valuation about being an entrepreneur, and pointed that it includes not only affective (such as: I like it, it is attractive) but also evaluative considerations (such as: it has advantages). Another type of view is that entrepreneurial attitudes should be a multidimensional model. Robinson, Stimpson, Huefner, and Hunt (1991) hold that entrepreneurial attitudes should include three dimensional components: cognitive, emotional and behavioral attitudes. Among them, cognitive attitudes are individual’s evaluation and view for entrepreneurial behavior; Emotional attitudes is the individual's dislike or preference for entrepreneurial behavior; Behavioral attitudes is the individual's tendency to respond to entrepreneurial behavior. In addition, according to research by Phan, Wong, and Wang (2002), entrepreneurial attitudes are divided into internal ecology and external ecology, including attitudes such as independence, rights, ability and social recognition.
Through the consideration of the above consulting definitions, we believe that the first type of definition of entrepreneurial attitudes are more suitable for this study because one of the main purposes of this study is to examine whether the different types of individual’s work values would lead to people’s preference or dislike attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Thus, this study have chosen Francisco and Chan (2009)’s definition. And correspondently, entrepreneurial attitudes were measured through an aggregate attitudes scale in this study.
2.3. Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification
Entrepreneurial opportunity identification (EOI) is the core issue of entrepreneurial theory (Gaglio, 2004). In entrepreneurial practice, entrepreneurial opportunity identification is an important part of the entrepreneurial process (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000) and it is also a precursor to other entrepreneurial activities such as evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities and development of entrepreneurial opportunities (Baron & Ensley, 2006). Therefore, understanding the connotation and essence of entrepreneurial opportunity identification as well as the mechanism of its occurrence and development is conducive to the improvement of existing entrepreneurial theories. However, in the current research the definition of entrepreneurial opportunity identification is controversial.
At present, there are mainly two types of views about entrepreneurial opportunity identification. The first type of view defines the concept of entrepreneurial opportunity identification from the perspective of individual ability. The precondition of this view is that opportunity exists objectively, and perception and discovery of opportunity are subjective (Grube, McMullen, & Thompson, 2008). For example, Shaver and Linda (1991) argued that entrepreneurial opportunities are discovered through individual’s systematic search, and are the process by which individuals consciously and systematically collect, process, and identify information. They believed that entrepreneurial individuals have excellent information processing capabilities. Another type of view is to define the concept of entrepreneurial opportunities identification from the perspective of the path of opportunity identification. This view hold that entrepreneurial opportunities are subjective and can be created by people. Singh (2000) believed that entrepreneurial opportunities are based on business ideas. The identification of entrepreneurial opportunities means that those opportunities begin with the entrepreneur's self-creation, through the entrepreneur's unique imagination.
This study focuses on potential entrepreneurs, the purpose is to discuss whether their potential for identifying entrepreneurial opportunities, which combined with their various work values, can influence their attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is more reasonable to define entrepreneurial opportunity identification from the perspective of individual abilities in this study. Furthermore, for the reason that the study was conducted in the Chinese context, by considering some Chinese scholar’s viewpoints, and on the basis of Shaver and Linda (1991)’s definition, this study defined the concept of entrepreneurial opportunity identification as: the ability of individuals to perceive, identify new ideas, combine their own experience and knowledge to analyze and evaluate their entrepreneurial opportunities, and translate them into business concepts that can create value for society.
2.4. Hypothesis
2.4.1. Relationship between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes
Many existing studies have proved that work values have an impact on employees' work attitudes. Kirkman and Shapiro (2001) found that work values are a key factor influencing employees' work attitudes and behaviors. Dong, Zhang, and Nagurney (2004) believed that values are the basis for understanding employees' attitudes and motivations, as well as perceptions and judgments about people and things. According to Lu, Kao, Siu and Lu (2011), in general, work values affect individuals' attitudes and behaviors at work.
In addition, as this study have mentioned, entrepreneurship can be viewed as a special career choice. Many previous studies also proved that work values will affect an individual's career choice preferences. Nair and Ghosh (2006) compared values of managers and employees in four industrial sectors in India. They found that people have different types of work values depending on industries. Such as employees who comes from manufacturing and consulting industries more focus on work values related to so-called “hygiene factors”, and by contrast, employees who comes from IT and service industries prefers work values related to “Motivators”.
According to the conclusions of the above studies, work values not only affect individual’s work attitudes, but also influence their career choice preferences. So we expect that work values also have an impact on individual’s entrepreneurial attitudes, so we propose Hypothesis1 as following:
H1: Work value is significantly related to entrepreneurial attitudes.
Specifically, this study suppose that different types of work values have different effects on entrepreneurial attitudes. According to Meyer, Irving, and Allen (1998), for those with a comfort and security work value, they paid more attention to the comfort and stability of the work itself. The higher the employee's evaluation of the value of comfort and security, the more employees pay attention to the comfort level of work. Moreover, the employees who pursue the comfort and security dimension pay more attention to the compliance and implementation of the customization and rules. They will also tend to avoid risks and taking too much responsibility during working process.
However, entrepreneurship itself has certain risks and uncertainties (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), and as entrepreneurs themselves need to formulate various systems and policies for new ventures, and need to assume the most important responsibility for the development of new ventures.
Based on above research results and logical assumptions, the study concludes that people with comfort and security values are more tend to hold a negative attitude towards entrepreneurship. Therefore, we hypothesize:
H1a: Comfort & security work value is negatively related to entrepreneurial attitudes.
Manhardt (1972)’s study shown that people who with competence and growth work value are more focus on how they can demonstrate and improve their abilities, they also excited about the changes and challenges at work, and hope more autonomy in their work.
Correspondingly, Chen, Greene, and Grick (1998) found that in the process of starting a business, entrepreneurs have to perform a specific set of tasks and act as an innovator, risk taker, stress bearer, executive manager and relationship builder, then they should clearly aware that entrepreneurial activities are full of innovation, and requires them continues to learn more related knowledge and skills.
At the same time, an individual also needs to have a sense of accomplishment in their work to ensure the continuity of entrepreneurial activities. Based on this, this study concludes that people with the competence and growth of work values are more likely to have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. Therefore, we propose:
H1b: Competence & growth work value is positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes.
According to Meyer, Irving, and Allen (1998)’s research results, for those who with status and independent dimensional work values are mainly focus on these work aspects in their job, such as: to be respected, opportunity to earn a high income, working independently, responsibility for taking risks, and so on. Consistently, according to Brenner, Pringle and Greenhaus (1999), entrepreneurship can bring similar work results, such as owning a company, taking risks, the possibility of making money, mastering autonomy, etc.
So we believe that entrepreneurial activities enable employees to reflect their own value, which is an important way for employees to prove their abilities, and also can be a means for employees to achieve status and independent value. Therefore, people with such work values are likely to use entrepreneurial activities as a tool to achieve their status and independent value, thus, they hold a more active and caring attitudes towards entrepreneurship.
Therefore, we propose:
H1c: Status and independence work value is positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes.
2.4.2. Moderating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification
Although there is scarce current research on the results and impact of entrepreneurial opportunity identification relatively, some studies show the relationship between entrepreneurial opportunity identification and entrepreneurial intention which represents individual’s subjective attitudes of entrepreneurship. For example, Liu, Hu, and Xu (2011) shows that entrepreneurial opportunity identification can strengthen individuals' positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship and thus have a significant impact on entrepreneurial intention.
The entrepreneurial process is a series of processes around the identification, development and utilization of entrepreneurial opportunities. The discovery and identification of entrepreneurial opportunities is the beginning of the entrepreneurial process and an important factor for entrepreneurs to form entrepreneurial intentions. While combined this results with Shane and Venkataraman (2000)’s research outcomes, which pointed out that entrepreneurial intention is a reflection of the subjective attitudes of the entrepreneurial behavior, since the choice of establishing a new business is regarded as a thoughtful thinking activity and planned behavior of the entrepreneur. According to the results of the above research, it has shown that entrepreneurial opportunities identification has a direct or indirect impact on entrepreneurial attitudes.
Considering that this study has already assumed that work values have a significant impact on entrepreneurial attitudes through a lot of previous research results. Therefore, we speculate that the interaction of work values and entrepreneurial opportunity identification can also have a significant impact on entrepreneurial attitudes.
By summarizing the above literature analysis and related theoretical research results, and based on our logical reasoning, we propose the following hypothesis:
H2: Entrepreneurial opportunity identification moderate the relationship between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes.
Specifically, we also believe that the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities has different effects on the relationship between different types of work values and entrepreneurial attitudes. First, we believe that people with comfort and security values cannot increase their positive emotional experience toward entrepreneurship even they have strong entrepreneurial opportunity identification abilities. People with comfort and security values have the characteristics of pursuing ease and stability and avoiding risks. For those with comfortable and security value, it will not lead to a safer and more stable life for them even if they have greater possibilities for entrepreneurial success, since the nature of entrepreneurship involve uncertainty and risk all the time. Therefore, we expect that entrepreneurial opportunity identification cannot change their attitude toward entrepreneurship for those with comfort and security work value.
Second, the common points, that is, people who have competence and growth values, status and independent values are pursue self-actualization, eager for success, hope for being respected, and more positive for change and risk. If these kinds of people could get greater possibility for entrepreneurial success through their strong ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunity, they will have bigger chance to improve themselves and get their expected social status. Therefore, those who with competence & growth and status & independence work values will strengthen their positive emotional experience of entrepreneurship, thus increase their positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship.
So we propose the following hypothesis:
H2a: Entrepreneurial opportunity identification positively moderate the relationship between competence & growth and entrepreneurial attitudes.
H2b: Entrepreneurial opportunity identification positively moderate the relationship between status & independence and entrepreneurial attitudes.
3. Methodology
3.1. Research Model
The research focuses on the relationship between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes, and the moderating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification. Research model of the study is summarized in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Research Model
3.2. Measurement
Considering that the study was conducted in the Chinese context, we referenced McGorry (2000)’s suggestion, and used a back-translation method for some foreign (English version) original scales into Chinese-language, and also used some Chinese scholar’s original scales. By this way, we can make the respondent understand the questions better and thus improve the accuracy of the study. All the measures were rated either 1, “strongly disagree” to 5, “strongly agree”.
(1) Work Values: Refers to the judgment criteria existing in the individual’s deep insides, which are used to evaluate the importance of work behavior and work results. Work values were measured using Meyer’s (1998) scale after revising Manhardt’s (1972) Work Values Scale. The scale includes three dimensions: comfort and security, competence and growth, status and independence. The number of items for each dimension are respectively 5, 9, and 7 (Cronbach's α = .883, .897, and .881 respectively).
(2) Entrepreneurial Attitudes: Refers to the degree to which the individual holds a positive or negative personal valuation about being an entrepreneur, and pointed that it includes not only affective (such as: I like it, it is attractive), but also evaluative considerations (such as: it has advantages) (Francisco & Chen, 2009). We used Francisco and Chen (2009)’s scale after the revision of Krueger (2000)'s entrepreneurial attitudes scale. It consists of 5 items (Cronbach's α = .894).
(3) Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification: Means ability of individuals to perceive, identify new ideas, combine their own experience and knowledge to analyze and evaluate their entrepreneurial opportunities, and translate them into business concepts that can create value for society. We adopted the Entrepreneur Opportunity Identification Scale constructed by Cai et al. (2014), which included four items (Cronbach's α = .877).
(4) Control variables: From the previous research on entrepreneurial attitudes, gender, education level, working years, marital status and industry were used as control variables. Therefore, we used them as control variables. In table 2, we viewed “gender” as unordered categorical variable, so we transformed it into dummy variable. We gave “0” for male, and gave “1” for female. The rest of variables, we viewed them as ordinal categorical variables according to different degrees or sequential order. Such as: for the variable of “industry”, 1-6 respectively represents industry’s different technical levels, which from higher technical level lower technical level. Similarly, for the variable of “education”, 1-5 respectively represents individual’s different educational levels.
Table 2: Results of hierarchical regression analysis
Note) EOI: Entrepreneurial opportunity identification
3.3. Sample
We used a questionnaire survey method, and all the sample data were collected by ways of on-site distribution. Specifically, we surveyed 8 companies in the Qinghai Province (north-western province of China), including the following industries: distribution industry, financial industry, science & technology industry, business service industry, tourism industry, manufacturing industry. 280 questionnaires were distributed, and 269 were returned, of which 258 were valid in accordance with the study.
From the valid questionnaires, 48.4% are male (125), 51.6% are female (133); the education level is divided into 5 grades, 1.6% are high school and below (4), 20.5% are junior college graduates (53), 56.6% are undergraduates (146), 21.4% are graduate school masters (55). 22.1% are unmarried (57), while 21.7% are married without children (56), 54.3% are married with children (140), 1.9% are divorced or widowed (5). The industry is divided into six: 16.7% are from distribution industry (43), 14.7% manufacturing industry (38), 19.4% science & technology industry (50), 27.5% financial industry (71), 9.7% tourism industry, 12% business service industry (31). 0.8% have no work experience (2), 6.6% have 3 years and below (17), 35.7% have 4-6 years (92), 31.4% have 7-10 years (81), 13.6% have 11-19 years (35), 12.0% have 20 years or more (31).
4. Results
4.1. Common Method Biases
Because all the data were collected from the same subject, it has a potential for common method biases. In order to prevent such problems, we try to control the common method bias through the following two ways: First, in the design of the questionnaire stage, we used the method of anonymous answering. Second, we used Harman’s single-factor test, it is found that the first principal component accounted for 27.64% of the total variance, and it does not account for the majority. It means that the problem of common method bias is not serious, and basically does not affect the reliability of our conclusion.
4.2. Validity
This study compares the square root of the AVE of the study variable with the magnitude of the correlation coefficient of each variable around it according to Fornell and Larcker (1981). If the square root of AVE is greater than the correlation coefficient of each variable around it, it means good discriminant validity. This study identifies the square roots of the AVE values of the five main variables by comparing comfort and security, competence and growth, status and independence, entrepreneurial attitudes, and entrepreneurial opportunity identification. We found that all of these square roots are significantly larger than the correlation coefficient between any two dimensions (see Table 1). As it is shown, therefore, it indicates that the research variables in this study has good discriminant validity.
Table 1: Mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficient of variables
Note) * p<0.05, ** p <0.01, *** p<0.001
The number indicated by the black body on the diagonal is the square root of the AVE value of the variable.
4.3. Correlation Analysis
Table 1 gives the mean, standard deviation and correlation coefficient of the five main variables. It can be seen that all the three dimensions of work values are related to entrepreneurial attitudes. Among them, Comfort and security is negatively related to entrepreneurial attitudes (r=-.635, p<.001). Competence and growth is positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes (r=.638, p<.001). Status and independence is also positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes (r=.584, p<.001). Entrepreneurial opportunity identification is positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes. (r=.389, p<.001). Entrepreneurial opportunity identification is not related to comfort and security, and also not related to competence and growth, but it is positively related to status and independence. It can be seen that the above correlations provide preliminary support for our hypothesis.
4.4. Hypothetical Test
The results of regression analysis of work values on entrepreneurial attitudes are shown in Table 2. The regression coefficient of comfort and security is -.397(p< .001). This shows that comfort and security have a significant negative impact on entrepreneurial attitudes, thus H1a is supported. The standard regression coefficient of competence and growth is .313(p<.001). This indicates that competence and growth have a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial attitudes, so H2b is supported. The standard regression coefficient of status and independent is .259(p< .001), which shows that status and independence also have a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial attitudes as H1c supported as well.
This study used hierarchical regression to test the moderating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification, and used three models to analyze the data. Before the test, the interaction terms of the independent variables and the moderators are mean-centralized to reduce the effects of multicollinearity, and simultaneously perform multicollinearity tests.
First, the control variables were introduced into the regression, get the model 1; then, introduced the independent variables, moderator (entrepreneurial opportunity identification) into the regression equation to get the model 2; finally, the interactive term (Competence and Growth x Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification, Status and Independence x Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification) introducing regression equations and obtaining models 3.
From Model 3 of Table 2, the impact of entrepreneurial opportunity identification on the relationship between competence & growth and entrepreneurial attitudes is also not significant (β=.060, p>.05). That is, entrepreneurial opportunity identification does not show a moderating effect on the relationship between competence & growth and entrepreneurial attitudes. H2a was not supported. But, H2b was supported, that is, the identification of entrepreneurial opportunity has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between status & independence and entrepreneurial attitudes (β=.130, p<.01), which means that the stronger the ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities, the stronger the influence of status and independent work values on entrepreneurial attitudes. Conversely, the weaker the ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities, the weaker the influence of status and independence work values on entrepreneurial attitudes as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Moderating effect of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification
Figure 2 and slope test show that with high EOI (1 SD above the mean), status and independence value was more positively related to entrepreneurial attitudes than low EOI (1 SD below the mean). Thus hypothesis H2b was supported.
5. Conclusion
5.1. Summary and Discussion
This study tested the impact of the three different dimensions of work values on entrepreneurial attitudes and the moderating effect of entrepreneurial opportunity identification on the relationship between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes. The results of the empirical test are as follows:
(1) Work values have a significant impact on entrepreneurial attitudes. This conclusion is consistent with one of the basic principles of organizational behavior, that is, Robbins and Judge (2008) indicated that values affect a person's attitudes and behaviors in general.
Among them, comfort and security have a significant negative impact on entrepreneurial attitudes. Competence and growth have a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial attitudes. Status and independence also have a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial attitudes. Entrepreneurial attitude is the starting point and important antecedent of entrepreneurial behavior. It will be influenced by one's internal work values. In addition, different dimensions of work value will have different effects on entrepreneurial attitudes. People with comfort and security value want to pursue a comfortable and stable job, but the essence of entrepreneurial activities has significant characteristics such as uncertainty and risk.
For those with competence and growth of work values, they always pursue continuous growth, learning and improvement at work, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it. So people with such values want more diversity and more change in their work, rather than being static. Correspondingly, in the process of starting a business, entrepreneurs need to face various changes in the market and the external competitive environment, and their comprehensive ability will be improved with the continuous growth of their own start-ups. Therefore, people with the competence and growth values will hold more positive and favorite attitudes toward their start-up.
Finally, those with status and independent values want to take greater control of their work, take more responsibilities, and even take risks. They do not hope that they will be influenced and restricted by others, and they will work independently according to their own wishes and ideas, and manage others to gain respect and recognition, and ultimately they will have a certain social status. Obviously, most of the characteristics of entrepreneurial activities are highly consistent with this.
Therefore, our research results matched with the main viewpoints of previous literature that we mentioned above, such as Meyer, Irving and Allen (1998)’s results as well as Shane and Venkataraman (2000)’s research outcomes.
(2) Entrepreneurial opportunity identification (EOI) has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between status & independence and entrepreneurial attitudes. However, EOI does not have moderating effect on the relationship between competence & growth and entrepreneurial attitudes.
People with status and independence values have a clear positive and favorite attitude towards entrepreneurial activities. So in this case, once they think that they have strong EOI ability, it means that they will increase their chances of achieving independent work and being respected through entrepreneurial activities. Correspondingly, they will also prefer to start a business and thus have a more positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. So this conclusion is in line with expectations, and it is also consistent with Shane and Venkataraman (2000)’s outcomes.
However, when it comes to those with competence and growth values, the condition is a little bit difference. After careful analysis and consideration, we believe that EOI itself does not make entrepreneurial activities more helpful for people to learn, grow and improve than other jobs. Therefore, individual’s entrepreneurial attitudes do not significantly enhance even though they thought that they have strong ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunities.
The deeper reason is perhaps as following: compare with entrepreneurship, other types of job will also help to improve the individual's competence. For example: If a person works in a mature, large company (such as the world’s top 500 companies), the competence and growth value for him (or her) may be much stronger than he (or she) establishes and runs a new venture. That is to say, from the perspective of value realization, many other types of work have strong alternatives to the personal ability enhancement attributes of entrepreneurship. Therefore, whether entrepreneurial opportunities can be better identified, that is, people cannot enhance their positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship, nor can they weaken their positive attitudes toward other types of work that also contribute to the improvement of individual abilities.
5.2. Implications
5.2.1. Theoretical implications
First, we found a new antecedent of entrepreneurial attitudes and fills the corresponding research gap. Although many researchers have tried to find out antecedents of entrepreneurial attitudes from various perspectives, it is found that factors such as personal traits and external environment affect individual entrepreneurial attitudes. But these studies ignore the impact of work values on entrepreneurial attitudes.
Second, this study explains how different dimensions of work values influence attitudes toward start-up. Thus, this study made new developments and contributions to values theory in the field of organizational behavior, and also to entrepreneurial theories. It enriches the scope of application for the two theories and bridges the two aspects of research fields.
Third, this study explains the impact of EOI on the relationships between work value and personal attitudes toward start-up. Specifically, our results show that EOI could only affect the relationships between one dimension of work value (i.e., Status and independence) and entrepreneurial attitudes, rather than affect all the relationships between every dimensions of work value and entrepreneurial attitudes. Thus, this study also expanded the scope of research on entrepreneurial opportunity identification.
5.2.2. Practical implications
First, the results of this study suggest that we should pay attention to their work values in selecting more suitable entrepreneur because those people who have work values of competence and growth, as well as status and independence are more likely to hold positive attitudes toward start-up, compared with those who have comfort and security.
Second, although the work values are hard to change, we can use alternative methods (such as improve people’s ability to identify entrepreneurial opportunity) to enhance a part of people’s attitudes towards entrepreneurship, and thus increase people’s entrepreneurial intention. For example, government and organizations (such as universities, training institutions) can provide more entrepreneurial education and training to potential entrepreneurs to help them better identify entrepreneurial opportunities.
Third, this study is also inspiring for the distribution industry. Currently the whole society is encouraging entrepreneurship and creating a strong atmosphere, the distribution industry also needs more entrepreneurs to further promote the overall development of the industry. In addition, more technical and good entrepreneurship can also make the distribution industry more innovative. Therefore, this study also provides meaningful implications for those potential entrepreneurs as well as the policy makers or relevant institutions in distribution industry.
Forth, this study also implies that improving individual’s ability to entrepreneurial opportunity identification, also means that it can be improved for their ability to find out and establish suitable distribution channels for potential new ventures' products or services, thus contribute to increase the possibilities of entrepreneurial success. Therefore, governments and organizations can also add some content about distribution industry (such as how to identify and select suitable distribution channels), while they provide relevant entrepreneurial education for potential entrepreneurs.
5.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions
This study has some limitations that need to be improved from the following aspects:
First, we can point out the limitations of the sample. The sampling of this study was mainly introduced by researchers’ colleagues and friends, and the selected companies were located in one city of western area in China. So it could not fully achieve random sampling in the true sense. Therefore, it may bring limitations to the conclusions. In the future research, we should try to achieve real randomness of sample selection.
Second, this study investigates the same subject by ways of anonymity, mixing the order of the questions, and so on. It is aimed to minimize the common method bias, thus it is difficult to pose a serious threat to the interpretation of the research results. However, the possible problem of common method bias also exists. We suggest to overcome this problem by separating the source of the response and using longitudinal data in the future research.
Third, this study only finds one moderator between work values and entrepreneurial attitudes (i.e., entrepreneurial opportunity identification), and this moderator could only moderates relationship between one dimension of work values (i.e., status and independence) and entrepreneurial attitudes. In future research, we suggest to find out more suitable moderators for such relationship.
In addition, we can also continue to explore the relations between work values and entrepreneurial intentions in the future with the close connection between entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial attitudes.
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