Email：nk_liuzhen@163.com。
Liu Zhen. Associate Professor, School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Shandong University. Director, Innovation Institute, School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Shandong University. The member of entrepreneurship research center of Nankai university. The research member of International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR). The anonymous reviewer of Management Decision (SSCI) and anonymous reviewer of IACMR.
His main research fields are social entrepreneurship and innovation, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and achievement transformation. As the project leader, he is presiding over 5 national and provincial department-level projects, including National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China. As a major participant, he participated in 6 national and provincial projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the collaborative education program of the Ministry of Education, and the Social Science Planning Program of Shandong Province. He has published more than 20 papers in key journals of National Natural Science Foundation and CSSCI journals such as “Nankai Management Review”, “Chinese Journal of Management”, “Research and Development Management”, “Science of Science and Management of S.&T.”, etc. Two of the papers were reproduced by the full text of “Enterprise Management Research”, which was copied by Renmin University of China, and one of them was awarded the first excellent paper of China's Social Entrepreneurship Research BBS. He is one of the early young researchers who pay attention to and study social entrepreneurship in China.
2.Masterpieces
Research on the Mechanism of Opportunity Recognition and Development of Social Entrepreneurship Based on the Theory of Resource Bricolage
Starting from entrepreneurial opportunity which is the core issue of entrepreneurship research, this paper explores the internal mechanism of opportunity identification and development of social entrepreneurship. Based on the theory of resource bricolage, this paper conducts an exploratory study on typical social enterprises such as Canyou, Shantao and Zhi-Gengnong. The findings show that, firstly, social entrepreneurs and their teams would identify and evaluate the potential value of social entrepreneurship opportunities at the social value, economic value, sustainable and institutional levels before the establishment of social enterprises. Secondly, they would make creative use of the resources at hand based on resource bricolage. Ultimately, they would create and operate the organizations, which in turn generate positive social impact and build the whole process of recognizing and developing opportunities based on the shared value chain based on stakeholders. On the basis of single-case coding and cross-cases integration, this paper proposes an integrated framework of opportunity recognition and development of social entrepreneurship. This will be helpful for the subsequent exploration of the relationship between entrepreneurial opportunity and subsequent behavior.
The Resource Bricolage in Social Entrepreneurship
——Theory, Character and Reflection
Entrepreneurship faces resource scarcity. Due to the fact that most of the social entrepreneurship studies were driven by phenomenon, a series of fundamental problems, including how to deal with resource scarcity, sources and results of resource bricolage in social entrepreneurship, had not received enough attention. The related researches were still cumulative debris. This paper bases on current researches of resource bricolage in social entrepreneurship, follows the theory-driving pattern, in order to make up the theory weakness of present studies and put forward further contemplation on the relevant studies in the future. It initially defines and explains the study background and theoretical basis of resource bricolage in social entrepreneurship; then through comparing with business entrepreneurship, investigates characters of resource bricolage in social entrepreneurship including resources at hand, making do and improvising; finally, on the basis of literatures research, discovers and raises key theoretical issues.
Double Driving Factors and the Growth Performance of Social Enterprises’ Performance: The Intermediary Role of Market Legalization
As a new kind of social entrepreneurship activities, social enterprises have got more and more attention from academia. Current researches focus on discussing the concepts, functions and characteristics of social enterprises, however, few researches focus on its internal growth mechanism, particularly theory-driven empirical research. Based on legalization perspective, this study focuses on social enterprise growth and build theoretical model that contains double driving factors, market legalization and growth performance. Double driving factors contain competitive orientation that decided by the economic status of social enterprises, and charity orientation that decided by the social status of social enterprises. Based on 230 social enterprises in China, this study uses structural equation models to test research hypotheses. The results show that: First, competitive orientation has positive effect on market legalization and social performance, however, it does not have significant effect on economic performance; Second, charity orientation has positive effect on market legalization and social performance, but has negative effect on economic performance; Third, market legalization plays a complete intermediary role between competitive orientation and economic performance, and it plays a incomplete intermediary role between competitive orientation and social performance, also between charity orientation and economic performance, and between charity orientation and social performance.
Research on Social Entrepreneurship: Status-quo Evaluation and Future Direction
As a hot research topic of entrepreneurship research, to what extent does the theoretical study on social entrepreneurship advance? What are the unique attributes of social entrepreneurship? Where are the possible future research directions of social entrepreneurship? In order to answer these questions, based on the sample of SSCI (1988-2013) literatures, this paper reviews the extant progress of social entrepreneurship. This paper suggests that social entrepreneurship research situates at a preliminary stage of theory development. The existing studies of social entrepreneurship put forward new points of view and launch new challenges toward the existing theories, such as the entrepreneurs' traits, the entrepreneurial opportunities, the institutional logics, the growth of the firm and the resource-based theory. In general, future directions should pay due attention to theory-driven concept and empirical study and promote social entrepreneurship research into a deeper theory building stage.
The Institutional Logics, Legitimacy Mechanisms and the Growth of Social Enterprises
Based on the institutional logic view, this study develops a research framework and explores the growth mechanism of social enterprises by applying case study method. Research findings show that under the mutual influences of market logic, charity logic, and rational choice logic, social enterprises achieve growth at economic level and social level by obtaining market legitimacy, alliance legitimacy, and relationship legitimacy. Meanwhile, different types of social enterprises show differences in patterns of legitimacy and degrees of growth due to the effects of various combinations of institutional logics. After within case analysis and cross cases comparison, which is used to deconstruct related constructs, this paper proposes an integrated framework of social enterprise growth and provides directions for future research.
3. Working papers
Zhen L, Yingzhao X, Shiyao J, Shuang H. Social Entrepreneurs’ Personal Network, Resource Bricolage and Relation Strength. Management Decision (SSCI),（Revision &Resubmition）.
