Creative entrepreneurs' artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness: the guanxi network perspective

PurposeThe dichotomy of views on “arts for arts sake” and “art must meet commerce” elicits the clash about how creative entrepreneurs encounter the dilemma of fulfilling personal satisfaction and chasing entrepreneurial aspiration along the entrepreneurial process. It is argued whether or not creative entrepreneurs can integrate artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness to disentangle the conflict and tension between art and commerce in the guanxi embedded culture context. The complex guanxi ties of creative entrepreneurs identified as bonding ties with families, bridging ties with friends and social ties with colleagues are presumed to activate personal and social values.Design/methodology/approachThe research design consists of two stages: face-to-face interviews and empirical survey. A total of four successful local creative entrepreneurs in craft arts were interviewed and asked questions related to their source of creative inspiration, market alertness and value creation. Findings derived from interviews enrich the questionnaire development of the empirical survey. The survey was conducted to realize the social phenomenon of creative entrepreneurs' guanxi, cognitive process and satisfaction with Taiwan's creative industry context. In total, 318 creative entrepreneurs’ responses were collected and analyzed by using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsResults suggest that guanxi networks lead to the acquisition of various social resources that are conducive to alertness in entrepreneurial opportunities and stimulate artistic creativity, which in turn gratify creative entrepreneurs' senses of entrepreneurial satisfaction with life, work and social contribution, as well as achieve higher entrepreneurial aspiration, perceived as social recognition and meaning of work.Practical implicationsResults of this study enrich the understanding of creative entrepreneurs and their awareness of balancing opportunity alerting and artistic creativity while starting creative businesses. Diverseness and closeness of guanxi networks can fill the gap between art and market and further pave the way to winning aspiration.Originality/valueThis paper advances the existing literature on creative entrepreneurship by adopting guanxi network theory to explore entrepreneurs' cognitive process in the linkage of artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness and their mediating effects on perceived entrepreneurial satisfaction and aspiration.

Guanxi network and leader member exchange

Purpose – This study investigated how leader-member relation and guanxi association create an impetus for creative work involvement (CWI) through feeling of energy (FE). The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 239 Malaysian-Chinese employees occupying various designations in 23 manufacturing organizations were questioned at two points of time. At the first instance, they responded for guanxi network (GN) and leader member exchange associations; and at the second instance, for their FE and creative involvement. Findings – Structural equation modeling analysis showed that social exchange relations (GN and leader member exchange) positively predicted employees' FE which resulted in increased level of CWI. Social implications – This study adds value to the existing literature on guanxi association and signifies that such values are not boundary restricted. Malaysian-Chinese also experience guanxi associations and its impact on their job outcomes. Originality/value – This study covers an unexplored role of GN in improving employees' level of energy and CWI; and mediation of leader-member exchange in the association of GN and energy.

Beyond Guanxi: Network Contingencies in Taiwanese Business Groups

Business groups consisting of legally independent affiliates with institutionalized relationships with each other exist in almost every market economy. While the groups are important and pervasive, little attention has been paid to the processes by which business groups emerge and grow. Reasons for this gap include a) a deficiency of the top-down, macro perspective of many business group studies, and b) the overemphasis of Guanxi networks in the literature of business organizations in East Asia. Personal relationships ( Guanxi) are treated as the necessary and sufficient condition for the entrepreneurship and evolution of business groups. In an attempt to refine the Guanxi perspective, the author uses case studies of five major Taiwanese business groups to propose a set of contingency factors. The suggestion offered in this paper is that entrepreneurs’ attributes and contextual factors are inseparable from the functions of the Guanxi network in the entrepreneurial process. Tracing the movements of these groups over the past four decades, it appears that group diversification evolves in a path-dependent fashion as opposed to a Guanxi-driven, idiosyncratic pattern as suggested by the Guanxi perspective. The influences of Guanxi for group diversification were clear in the early stages when markets were tightly controlled and the personalistic networks became the core capabilities underlining diversification. However, as groups grew and institutions developed, the significance of political Guanxi diminished and the decision-making of diversification strategy became hinged mainly upon the resources firm accumulated overtime.