创业失败经历何以成为求职"敲门砖"?印象管理视角的理论构建OA北大核心CHSSCDCSTPCD

Numerous entrepreneurial firms fail.Most entrepreneurs who experience entrepreneurial failure quit entrepreneurship and return to the labor market in search of a paid job.Job-seeking not only is a turning point in an entrepreneur's own recovery from entrepreneurial failure but also potentially avoids wastage of society's entrepreneurial resources.However,although it is a common phenomenon,theoretical research on job-seeking among entrepreneurs who have failed has been limited.Grounded in impression management theory,this study explored entrepreneurs'social motivations to manage failure and constructed an integrated framework to examine how they use impression management strategies in their subsequent job-seeking.The study focused on three issues:(1)tracing the unique definition and structure of entrepreneurs'impression management strategies after entrepreneurial failure,in which two core dimensions of impression management strategies—assertive and defensive strategies—were proposed;(2)revealing how the nature of an entrepreneurial failure event affects subsequent impression management strategies;and(3)unraveling the mechanism by which impression management strategies influence job-seeking outcomes using signaling theory.This study clarifies the hitherto opaque process leading from entrepreneurial failure to success in job-seeking among entrepreneurs.