The influence of entrepreneurial team’s cognitive adaptability on its risk decision making

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on the risk decision making of entrepreneurial team, deconstruct the intermediate process mechanism of cognitive adaptability in promoting risk decision making and reveal the role of opportunity identification and entrepreneurial efficacy in the decision-making process, which clarifies how cognitive adaptability affects decision-making speed and effect. Design/methodology/approach This study establishes a relationship model among entrepreneurial team’s cognitive adaptability, opportunity identification, entrepreneurial efficacy and risk decision making, and selects 316 entrepreneurial teams to empirically study the relationship among core variables using Bootstrap analysis and Johnson–Neyman technology. Findings Cognitive adaptability though has no direct impact on risk decision-making speed, whereas it directly affects risk decision-making effect; opportunity identification has a full mediating effect between cognitive adaptability and decision-making speed, and a partial mediating effect between cognitive adaptability and decision-making effect; entrepreneurial efficacy plays a moderating role between opportunity identification and decision-making speed, and a same role between opportunity identification and decision-making effect. Research limitations/implications First, in setting the research model, the study does not take other moderators into consideration, which might be improved. Second, the study ignores the origin and formation of entrepreneurial team’s cognitive adaptability, the predisposing factors of which might be discussed in the future research. Practical implications The practical implication of this paper is to guide the entrepreneurial team to turn their focus on the impact of highly implicit cognitive adaptability on decision making, which might be divided into two aspects: the first is to enhance the cognitive adaptability of the entrepreneurial team, cultivate team members’ self-examination awareness and self-monitoring habits. The second is to strengthen team’s psychological capital and value the cultivation of entrepreneurial efficacy. Originality/value This paper breaks through the team process and structure perspectives, explores the driving mechanism of entrepreneurial team risk decision making from team cognition perspective, and deconstructs the logical framework of cognitive adaptability’s influence on risk decision making. This paper applies Johnson–Neyman technology to quantify the mediating effect entrepreneurial efficacy exerts on cognitive adaptability and decision-making speed, as well as on cognitive adaptability and decision-making effect.