The Influence of Socio-Economic Institutions on the Risk Recognition of Entre- and Intra-preneurs : Cases of Japan's High Technology Industries

尽管日本人经常被认为是避险的，但据报道，越来越多的公司成功地进行了高科技创新。为什么？制度是人类价值取向的基础，它以路径依赖的方式约束人类的行为，但其他制度往往发展出互补的机制来降低风险意识，鼓励冒险行为。本研究通过对纳米、生物和半导体行业高风险项目的企业家、内部企业家和管理者的访谈，试图找到风险态度、制度和企业间关系之间的互补机制，并确定管理技术创新的风险治理结构。通过分析受访者的风险态度和公司的组织特征，本研究统计出四个互补模型。(1)内部企业控制模型有两个相反的例子：(1)公司增加了家族所有权和低…比例风险较高的业务出售，首先稳定经营，然后将剩余资源分配给高科技创新；或(1b)母公司增加所有权、控制权和资金支持，允许外部合资企业专注于高风险业务。考虑到它们的风险对冲机制，这些案例不会增加受访者的风险意识。(2)R&D风险模型推动企业提高其研发支出在销售中的比例，面临更高水平的风险。但它的结果要么是加快了他们进入市场的速度，要么是让他们意识到技术发展的阶段。因此，他们变得不那么过于自信，并成功地降低了高风险意识。(3)风险投资企业风险模型使风险投资公司降低了公司的财务风险，而他们对短期收益的压力增加了受访者的风险意识。(4)IPO模式利用股票市场为公司筹集必要的资金。这种做法加强了受访者对危险行为的自我控制。但在现实中，成功完成IPO的公司更愿意面临业绩困难，这要求它们还必须依赖风险投资公司。因此，IPO公司最终面临着与风险投资公司模式类似的情况。这些发现似乎表明，前两种模式是有效和高效的，但在现实中，这样的情况相当罕见，迫使公司依赖于风险投资公司。因此，即使是IPO公司，最终也会增加风险意识，而不会增加对管理层应有的自我控制。虽然仍在调查中，但前两种模型似乎涉及许多类型的传统企业间关系，这些关系促进了技术创新。这些发现揭示了日本型技术创新的动力和效率来源，并为企业家、内部企业家、高风险项目的管理者、学者和政策制定者提供了一些重要的见解。较少

Although Japanese are often said to be risk averse, an increasing number of companies successfully engaging in high technology innovation have been reported. Why? Institutions, which become the base of human value orientation, restrict human behavior path-dependently, but other institutions often develop complementary mechanisms to reduce a sense of risk and encourage risk-taking behavior. This research tries to find complementary mechanisms among risk attitudes, institutions, and inter-firm relations by interviewing entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and managers in high-risk projects in the nano, bio, and semiconductor industries, and to identify a risk governance structure for managing technology innovation.By analyzing interviewees' risk attitudes and companies' organizational characteristics, this research statistically identified four complementary models. (1) The Internal Business Control Model has two opposite examples:(1a) companies increase family ownership and a proportion of low … More -risk business sales, stabilize their operations first, and then allocate surplus resources to high technology innovations; or (1b) parent companies increase their ownership, control and financial support to allow their outside ventures to focus on high-risk businesses. These cases, given their risk hedging mechanisms, do not increase interviewees' sense of risk. (2) The R&D Risk Model pushes companies to increase a proportion of their R&D expenditure in their sales and face a higher level of risk. But it results in either speeding up their reach to the market or making them aware of the stage of technology development. Consequently, they become less over self-confident and successfully reduce a sense of high risk. (3) The Venture Capital (VC) Firm Risk Model allows VC firms to reduce the financial risk of companies, while their pressure for short-term gains increases a sense of risk on the part of interviewees. (4) The IPO Model uses the stock market for companies to raise necessary fund. This practice strengthens the interviewees' self control over risky behavior. But in reality, companies which successfully achieved IPOs rather face performance difficulties, requiring them also to rely on VC firms. Hence, IPO companies end up facing a similar condition as the VC Firm Model. These findings seem to suggest that the first two models are effective and efficient, but in reality such situations are rather rare to find, forcing companies to depend on VC firms. Consequently, even IPO companies end up increasing a sense of risk without increasing due self control over management. Though still under investigation, the first two models seem to involve many types of traditional inter-firm relations which facilitate technology innovation. These findings suggest the sources of dynamics and efficiency in the Japanese type of technology innovation and provide some important insights to entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, managers in high-risk projects, scholars and policy makers. Less