Mu Weiqi, Xu Jie, Li Fugui, Li Siying, Li Xue, Zhou Mingjie
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jan 13;12:806756. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.806756. eCollection 2021.
The COVID-19 pandemic severely hit small and micro-businesses. In the face of the impact of the pandemic, how to help entrepreneurs, especially small- and micro-businesses that are more sensitive to the impact of the pandemic, make decisions to reduce losses has become an issue worth paying attention to. From the perspective of personality approach, this article studied openness, which is the strongest predictor of entrepreneurial performance among the big five personality traits, and explored the impact of entrepreneurs' openness on entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the inconsistent mediating role of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among 238 entrepreneurs of small- and micro-businesses when China was recovering from the pandemic and starting to resume work and production (February 18 - February 26, 2020). Entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was measured by comparing the business conditions before and after the pandemic. The results showed that entrepreneurs' openness positively impacted strategic decision comprehensiveness and entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the two competing hypotheses proposed by summarizing previous research, the results supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness negatively affected entrepreneurial performance. It indicated that entrepreneurs who tend to collect and analyze information extensively and then make decisions during the pandemic could not seize opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial performance. The results further supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness was an inconsistent mediator between openness and entrepreneurial performance, showing that entrepreneurs with low openness can also reduce the loss of entrepreneurial performance during the pandemic by making incomplete but rapid strategic decisions. This study found that the openness of entrepreneurs had a positive impact on strategic decision comprehensiveness for the first time and provided more empirical evidence for the negative effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance in the context of information uncertainty and unanalyzable situations. The inconsistent mediating effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness revealed in this study also has practical significance for helping entrepreneurs make correct decisions to reduce the losses caused by the pandemic.
新冠疫情对小微企业造成了严重冲击。面对疫情的影响，如何帮助创业者，尤其是对疫情影响更为敏感的小微企业做出决策以减少损失，已成为一个值得关注的问题。从人格特质的角度出发，本文研究了开放性这一在大五人格特质中对创业绩效预测力最强的特质，探讨了创业者的开放性在新冠疫情期间对创业绩效的影响，以及战略决策全面性在创业绩效中不一致的中介作用。在中国从疫情中恢复并开始复工复产期间（2020年2月18日至2月26日），对238位小微企业创业者进行了在线问卷调查。通过比较疫情前后的经营状况来衡量新冠疫情期间的创业绩效。结果表明，创业者的开放性在新冠疫情期间对战略决策全面性和创业绩效有积极影响。在总结以往研究提出的两个竞争性假设中，结果支持战略决策全面性对创业绩效有负面影响。这表明在疫情期间倾向于广泛收集和分析信息然后做出决策的创业者无法抓住机会并提高创业绩效。结果进一步支持战略决策全面性在开放性和创业绩效之间是一个不一致的中介，表明开放性低的创业者在疫情期间也可以通过做出不完整但快速的战略决策来减少创业绩效的损失。本研究首次发现创业者的开放性对战略决策全面性有积极影响，并为信息不确定和无法分析的情况下战略决策全面性对创业绩效的负面影响提供了更多实证证据。本研究揭示的战略决策全面性的不一致中介效应对于帮助创业者做出正确决策以减少疫情造成的损失也具有现实意义。
