기업가의 불법행위 수용성과 사업목적이 벤처기업 성과에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among entrepreneurs' illegality acceptance and business purposes, and venture firms' performances. The existing literatures on illegality and corruption have largely discussed on a macro-level and very few attempts have been made on a corporate-level. Particularly, it is difficult to find these studies on venture firms. Many studies on entrepreneurship have been showing empirical evidence that a positive relationship between entrepreneurs' capital, such as education and experience, and business performances exists. However, it is hard to find that any studies have explored the influence on firms' performances of unconventional forms of entrepreneur capitals, such as corruptive and illegal behaviors. Recently, Aids and van Praag (2007) analyze whether illegal entrepreneurship experience can be a predictor for the level of business performance, expecting a positive relationship. Their results indicated that illegal entrepreneurship can not be associated with business performance in general. In this paper, we attempt to analyze whether entrepreneur's illegality acceptance and business purposes affect venture firms' subjective and financial performances. In general, we expect a negative relationship between illegality acceptance and firm's performances. We further expect that interactions between entrepreneurs' illegality acceptance and business purposes will significantly affect firm's performances. Even though many entrepreneurs frequently express the need of corruption and illegality for their business in real world, few empirical studies have quantified the relationship between illegality acceptance and business purpose and business performances. However, very few empirical studies have measured the relationship among entrepreneur's illegality acceptance, business purpose, and business performances. In addition, no empirical studies have attempted the interaction effect of illegality acceptance and business purpose on a firm's performance. The objective of our study is to fill this knowledge gap. Based on the relevant economic and psychological literature, we proposed four hypotheses as follows. Hypothesis 1 : Entrepreneur's illegality acceptance will be negatively related to venture firm's performances. Hypothesis 2 : In the purpose of business, achievement-seeking will be positively associated with venture firm's performances. Hypothesis 3 : In the purpose of business, money-seeking will be negatively associated with venture firm's performances. Hypothesis 4 : Interaction effects between illegality acceptance and business purposes will be significantly related to venture firm's performances. In order to test these hypotheses, we selected all 300 independent companies on the Daedeok Cluster Venture List of 2005(these are situated in Daejeon city). We phoned the CEOs or highest-ranking officers of these firms and sent questionnaires to them. 90 firms replied to the survey(a response rate of 30%.). We assured that the responses would be kept completely confidential. Firms ranged from 3 to 210 employees in size, with a mean of 44 employees. Also, firm age ranged from 1 year to more than fifteen years old, with a mean age of 4.8 years. Our sample included firms from four industries: 19 of IT manufacturers(21.1%), 11 of computer and related firms(12.2%), 35 of software firms(38.9%), 25 of other industrial firms(27.8%). The four variables such as illegality acceptance, money seeking, achievement seeking, and subjective performance were measured using multi-item indexes, so we did reliability and validity analysis. The Cronbach alpha coefficients for this study ranged from 0.63 to 0.84, all within acceptable ranges described in the literature for study. With respect to convergent validity, all items loaded at 0.61 or higher with their corresponding constructs, which is considered very significant. Lastly, all of the items loaded higher on their predicted constructs than on their cross loadings, indicating discriminant validity was achieved. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Before we conducted the analysis, the correlation coefficients were estimated to detect any multicollinearity among our independent variables. The correlation coefficients show a low to moderate degree of multicollinearity among the independent variables. And we transformed the variables for firm size to correct for non-normality due to positively skewed distributions. The natural logarithm of the value was used in the hierarchical regression analysis. In addition, in order to reduce potential problems of multicollinearity, the components of the interaction term to test Hypothesis 4 were standardized before multiplication. All regressions control for the size and age of the firms, and also for industry, growth stages and types of startup, in the latter case using dummy variables. Overall, the results showed that entrepreneur's illegality acceptance was negatively related to firms' subjective performance but not to firms' financial performance(thereby rendering weak support for H1). Regression results also indicate that significant evidence for a negative relationship between business purpose, i.e., entrepreneurs' money-seeking, and firm's performances(thus supporting H3). However, firm's performances and business purpose, i.e., entrepreneur's achievement, are not significantly related to each other(thereby rejecting H2). In addition, we found that negative associations between firms' performances and the interactions between entrepreneurs' business purpose and illegality acceptance. More specifically, interaction between illegality acceptance and money-seeking is negatively associated with subjective performance. Interaction between acceptance of illegality and achievement-seeking is negatively associated with financial performance(thus partially supporting H4). These results of interaction effect mean that a entrepreneur with higher acceptance of illegality and with higher money-seeking or achievement-seeking at same time can significantly reduce firm's performance. In general, our results show negative association between entrepreneur's acceptance of illegality and business performance as measured by financial and non-financial items. The results also show strong evidence for a negative association between entrepreneur's business purpose(in case of money-seeking) and business performance. Furthermore, our findings indicate that entrepreneurs' illegality acceptance and firm's performance are more negatively related for entrepreneurs who have higher money-seeking or achievement-seeking purpose of business. Existing studies related to entrepreneurship have treated entrepreneur capital such as education and experience as important factors for explaining the venture firms' performances. This study suggests that entrepreneurs' psychological and behavioral capitals can be important factors in explaining the venture firms' performances. Nevertheless, the study has a few limitations. First, the sample recruited from Daejeon is not the representative of domestic venture firms. Thus it does not cover all the regions in Korea and the results may not apply to all sectors of venture business. Second, this study relied upon questionnaire-based self-reports. Respondents may not be able to report accurately about themselves and their firms' performance. Because the use of a mail survey is a legitimate research approach, it may not adequately capture the subtle features of organizational illegality. In addition, all the measures that are obtained from a self-report can create the potential for common method variance. Third, we did not specify causal directions in developing and testing hypotheses because the current study has the limitation of cross-sectional design. We hope that future studies will deal with such issues more rigorously using longitudinal data and other types of study designs to better investigate causal relationships.