Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Cultural Meaning of Entrepreneurship

创业的文化意义摘要：这个项目将采用比较的视角来揭示和对比中国和美国这两个世界上最大的经济体，在不同的经济发展阶段，对创业的文化取向截然不同，并调查这种意义是如何随着时间的推移而演变的。本文定位于经济社会学和文化社会学，通过关注文化在创业中所扮演的角色，将对创业文学做出贡献。它还将增进对工作的当代意义以及资本主义全球化的理解。没有什么问题比理解工作的意义更重要了，因为我们醒着的大部分时间都在从事这样或那样的工作。理解工作对人们意味着什么这一根本问题，将为公众提供关于工作动机、满足感和工作与生活平衡的讨论。此外，这项研究将对旨在鼓励创新和经济发展的公共政策具有实际意义。在硅谷巨大成功的引领下，S在20世纪80年代的创业热情已经蔓延到不同的国家和文化。其中最主要的是最近中国创业家的惊人崛起。仅在2015年，风险投资家就向中国初创企业投入了创纪录的370亿美元，使中国在全球排名第二(安永会计师事务所2016年)。企业家精神兴起的如此之快令人费解。与新教伦理不同，一千多年来，中国传统文化重视知识追求，而不是市场机会主义行为。商人被认为地位低下，资本家甚至在毛的统治下受到惩罚。直到70年代末邓的改革开放政策，S，中国才逐渐放松了对私营企业的约束，直到2000年，中国才成为全球创业的温床。考虑到这种传统上不利的环境(如果不是完全不利的话)，企业家精神是如何成长到今天的活力的？尤其是文化环境发生了怎样的变化，中国中的企业家是如何认识自己的身份和在社会中的角色的？这些理解与美国的理解有何不同或相似之处？通过访谈和参与者的观察，这个项目试图揭示创业的当前文化意义。本论文还将利用尖端的机器学习技术和主题建模来分析大型媒体文本语料库，以考察创业的含义是如何随着时间的推移而演变的。

The Cultural Meaning of EntrepreneurshipAbstract: This project will adopt a comparative lens to uncover and contrast what it means to be an entrepreneur in China and the U.S., the two largest economies in the world at different economic development stages with drastically different cultural orientations to entrepreneurship, and to investigate how this meaning has evolved over time. Situated in economic sociology and cultural sociology, this dissertation will contribute to the literature of entrepreneurship by directing attention to the under-studied role that culture plays. It will also enhance understanding of the contemporary meaning of work as well as the globalization of capitalism. There are few issues that are more crucial than understanding the meaning of work, given that we spend most of our awake time pursuing one type of work or another. Understanding the fundamental question of what work means to people will inform public discourses on job motivation, satisfaction, and work-life balance. Furthermore, this study will have practical implications for public policies aiming to encourage innovation and economic development. Led by the enormous success of Silicon Valley, entrepreneurial fervor in the 1980's has spread across countries and cultures. Chief among them is the recent phenomenal rise of entrepreneurship in China. In 2015 alone, venture capitalists poured a record $37 billion into Chinese startups, making China second in the global league (Ernst and Young 2016). Such rapidity of the rise of entrepreneurship is puzzling. Unlike Protestant ethics, for more than a millennium, the Chinese traditional culture valued intellectual pursuits rather than market opportunistic behaviors. Business people were perceived as low status, and capitalists were even punished under Mao. It was only after Deng's open and reform policy in the late 70's that China gradually relaxed its constraint on private businesses, and it was not until 2000 that China emerged as a global hotbed for entrepreneurship. Given this traditionally unfavorable if not outright hostile environment, how did entrepreneurship grow to today's vibrancy? Particularly, how did the cultural environment change, and how do entrepreneurs in China make sense of their identity and their role in the society? How are these understandings different from or similar to those in the U.S.? Using interviews and participant observations, this project seeks to uncover the current cultural meaning of entrepreneurship. This dissertation will also take advantage of cutting-edge machine learning techniques and topic modeling to analyze large media text corpora in order to examine how the meaning of entrepreneurship has evolved over time.