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Product
The effects of entrepreneurs’ innovation
moral awareness and ethical
behavior on product innovation of
new ventures 421
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply the social cognitive theory and social learning theory to
examine the different mechanisms through which entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior affect
the product innovation of new ventures.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors collected survey data from 150 founders and 389
founding team members of new ventures in China in 2015. The final sample contained 113 questionnaires
from entrepreneurs and 246 questionnaires from their founding team members. Regression analyses were
used to test direct effects, and Preacher and Hayes’ (2004) formal mediation test approach with bootstrapping
method was used to evaluate the mediation effects.
Findings – The findings indicate that the ethical levels of entrepreneurs can affect the product
innovation of a new venture through two paths: entrepreneurs with low levels of moral awareness tend
to be more individually creative, which facilitates product innovation, and entrepreneurs with high
levels of ethical behavior can make founding teams more creative, which also promotes product
innovation.
Practical implications – The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurs are not negatively
affected by their low moral awareness as long as they exhibit high ethical behavior with founding team
members. But such low moral awareness has to be genuine. The best way to promote product innovation in
the long run is to create an organizational culture of ethical behavior rather than to ignore moral issues in
decision-making.
Originality/value – This study challenges the assumption that moral awareness and ethical behavior are
always consistent. It takes an initial step to resolve the contradiction in the current literature regarding the
relationship between the ethical levels of entrepreneurs and product innovation in the context of founders and
founding teams in new ventures.
Keywords Product innovation, Entrepreneurs, Ethical leadership, Creativity, Moral awareness
Paper type Research paper
H3. A negative relationship exists between entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and product
innovation in their ventures, partially because moral awareness is negatively
associated with individual creativity.
H6. Founding teams’ creativity mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ ethical
behavior and product innovation.
Figure 1 illustrates our basic conceptual model and hypotheses.
Method
Sample and data
A sample of 150 new ventures located in six Chinese provinces and municipalities was
compiled using the authors’ personal connections and a firm that provides survey
services. Consistent with the current literature, new ventures are defined as firms that
are six years old or younger (Zahra et al., 2000). The sample firms are widely
distributed in areas that are both frequently and less actively involved in
entrepreneurial activities. They operate in economically developed regions (Beijing,
Shandong, Guangdong and Fujian) and underdeveloped regions (Hubei and Jiangxi).
Their main industries include manufacturing, information services, wholesale and
retail services, and real estate.
In 2015, 150 questionnaires to founders and 389 questionnaires to the founding team
members of new ventures were mailed out. To increase the valid response rate, research
assistants called each company, explained the study’s objectives and questionnaire
contents, and confirmed names and job titles before mailing the questionnaires. The
respondents were asked to include at least two key founding team members who actively
participated in major decision-making processes. One hundred thirteen questionnaires
from entrepreneurs (75.33 per cent response rate) and 246 from founding team members
(63.24 per cent response rate) were retained after questionnaires with excessive missing
data were removed and questionnaires by the respondents who were not main decision-
makers were eliminated.
The questionnaire for the entrepreneurs asked about their personal characteristics, their
moral awareness, their individual creativity, the firm’s product innovativeness, and the
–
Entrepreneur’s moral awareness Entrepreneur’s individual creativity
+ Figure 1.
The conceptual
Product innovation
model and
+
Entrepreneur’s ethical behavior Founding team’s creativity + hypotheses
CMS founding team’s creativity. The questionnaire for the founding team members asked about
13,2 their individual characteristics and the entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior.
Table I lists the entrepreneurs’, founding team members’, and firms’ charaftcteristics.
A total of 86.7 per cent of the 113 entrepreneurs were men; 69.9 per cent were 40 years old
or younger; and 64.6 per cent had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Of the 246 founding team
members, 68.7 per cent were men; 76 per cent were 40 years old or younger; and 64.6 per
428 cent had a bachelor’s degree or higher. For firm characteristics, one-third of the firms
were 1-2 years old, 54.9 per cent were 3-4 years old, and 11.5 per cent were 5-6 years old. A
total of 35.4 per cent of firms were from Northern China, 19.5 per cent were from Central
China, and the rest were from Southern China. About half of the firms had 50 or fewer
employees.
This scale highlights the two key components used to assess the performance of new
products: quality and speed (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995).
Independent variables
Entrepreneurs’ moral awareness. Entrepreneurs read a short vignette adapted from
Reynolds (2006) (see Appendix). The scenario described an incident in which a
representative of a medical clinic called to inquire about a delayed order. Although the
shipping clerk said the order had been shipped two days ago, the manager discovered that
the order had actually been shipped that morning. The respondents indicated their
agreement with three statements:
(1) This situation has very important ethical aspects.
(2) This situation clearly involves no ethical issues.
(3) If the company had an ethics resource committee, I would definitely report this
situation.
Mediating variables
Entrepreneur’s individual creativity. A measurement scale of creativity used extensively in
creativity research (Shalley and Perry-Smith, 2001) and modified by Perry-Smith (2006) was
used. Entrepreneurs rated the extent to which their work involved:
CMS new ideas and approaches to customer problems;
13,2 new applications for current technology;
risk-taking;
radical new ideas, and
novel long-term vision or applications.
430 Cronbach’s a for this scale was 0.97.
Founding teams’ creativity. Anderson and West’s (1998) approach of focusing on new
idea generation was adopted to assess the founding team’s creativity. Sample items are as
follows: The founding team members I lead often devise new ideas associated with the job
and always solve problems by proposing new and creative ideas. Cronbach’s a for this scale
was 0.88.
The scores of founding team members were aggregated to measure entrepreneurs’
ethical behavior. Within-group agreement was assessed before the aggregation by using the
median inter-rater agreement coefficient Rwg (James et al., 1984) and intra-class correlation
coefficients (ICC1 and ICC2) (Bliese and Halverson, 1998). The median inter-rater agreement
coefficient (Rwg) for the variable of ethical behavior was 0.90, indicating a high inter-rater
agreement. The value of ICC1 was 0.13, above the widely accepted cutoff value of 0.12. The
test statistics (F-ratios) associated with the values of ICC1 were statistically significant. The
value of ICC2 was 0.94, above the conventional threshold level of 0.70.
Control variables
Six control variables plus ten industry dummies were used for H1 to H3 regarding the
relationship among entrepreneurs’ moral awareness, individual creativity, and product
innovation (Baron and Tang, 2011). At the individual level, gender and human capital
variables such as years of education and age are often considered to affect entrepreneurial
behavior (Hamilton, 2000). Gender is coded as 1 if an entrepreneur is a man and 0 otherwise.
Education levels were transformed into years of schooling using Xie and Hannum’s (1996)
coding scheme. The variable “education” takes a value of 0 if an entrepreneur is illiterate, 5
for elementary school graduates, 8 for middle school graduates, 11 for high school or
vocational school graduates, 13 for associate degree holders, 15 for bachelor’s degree
holders, and 18 for master’s degree holders or above. Age was measured with three
categories: The value is 1 for 20 to 30 years old, 2 for 31 to 40 years old, and 3 for 41 to 50
years old. No entrepreneurs were younger than 20 or older than 50 in our sample.
At the firm level, firm age, firm size, firm performance, and industry sector may influence
innovation (Ucbasaran et al., 2009). Firm age was measured by the number of years the firm
had existed. Firm size was measured by the number of employees in the firm. Firm
performance was measured by sales revenues (Baron and Tang, 2011). Ten dummy
variables for industry sectors were added (public administration; retail and wholesale
services; information services; hospitality; manufacturing; real estate; construction; farming,
fishing, and forestry; transportation; science and technology; “other” is the default category).
For simplicity, the results for the industry dummies are not reported.
For H4-H6 on the relationship among entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior, founding teams’
creativity, and product innovation, founding team size and group diversity in age, gender
and education were controlled. Firm age, firm size, firm performance and industry sectors
were also used as control variables. Team size was included as a control variable because
larger teams may have more resources and skills to facilitate team creativity and product
innovation. It is measured as the number of founding members in a venture. As
demographic diversity also influences team creativity, team diversity in age, gender, and Product
education were also included as control variables (Kunze and Leicht-Deobald, 2014; Pearsall innovation
et al., 2008; Ries et al., 2013). Diversity in age and in education were measured with the index
coefficient of variation for age/education, calculated by dividing the standard deviations of
age/education in a team by their respective expected values (Allison, P1978). Diversity in
gender was measured with the Teachman index calculated as D = Pi [ln(Pi)], where i
represents the category “man” and Pi is the proportion of the members belonging to the i
category (Teachman, 1980).
431
Analyses
Common method variance. Harman’s one-factor test was adopted in SPSS 24.0 to check for
possible common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). All self-reported variables were
entered into an exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factoring and a varimax
rotation. Three factors emerged with eigenvalues greater than 1 and explained 60.84 per
cent of the variance. Specifically, the largest factor explained 26.36 per cent of the total
variance, far less than the threshold of 40 per cent. No single factor accounted for the
majority of covariance among measures. Therefore, no common method variance was
detected.
Reliability and validity. We used factor analysis in SPSS and AMOS 24.0 to assess the
constructs’ reliability and validity. Reliability is assessed by Cronbach’s alphas. Table II
shows that Cronbach’s alphas of all major variables are in the range of 0.72 to 0.97, above
the recommended level of 0.7 (Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994).
To test the constructs’ validity, we calculated the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measures
of sampling adequacy to determine if the data were suitable for factor analysis (Cerny and
Kaiser, 1977). High KMO values (> 0.7) indicate low partial correlation for each pair of
variables and thus the data are suitable for factor analysis. Table II shows that KMO values
of all constructs are above 0.7, suggesting that the data were suitable for factor analysis.
Next, exploratory factor analyses for entrepreneurs’ moral awareness, ethical behavior,
individual creativity, and founding team creativity were conducted. As Table II shows,
factor loadings for all constructs are larger than 0.6 (range from 0.61 to 0.93); CR values are
all higher than 0.7 (ranging from 0.80 to 0.97); AVE values range from 0.51 to 0.75 (>0.5).
Overall, all measures exhibited adequate convergent validity (Hair et al., 2006).
To statistically check whether an entrepreneur’s ethical level is indeed a two-dimensional
construct, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for an entrepreneur’s ethical level was
conducted. A one-dimensional (i.e. treating an entrepreneur’s ethical level as a one-
dimensional construct) and a two-dimensional model (i.e. treating an entrepreneur’s ethical
level as a two-dimensional construct including moral awareness and ethical behavior) were
constructed and examined to determine which better fit the data. As Table III shows, the
Entrepreneur’s
individual creativity
a b
c'
Entrepreneur’s moral Product
awareness c
innovation
c'
Entrepreneur’s ethical Product
c
behavior entrepreneurs innovation
Results
Table IV presents descriptive statistics and a correlation matrix for major variables.
Entrepreneurs averaged 36.4 years of age and 14 years of education. The ventures averaged
3.5 years. The founding team size had a mean value of 3.2. Table IV shows that
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness was negatively correlated with their ethical behavior.
Moreover, entrepreneurs’ individual creativity and founding teams’ group creativity were
positively correlated with product innovation, consistent with Bharadwaj and Menon’s
(2000) findings.
Table V shows the regression models used to test H1 to H3; that is, entrepreneurs’ moral
awareness has a negative relationship with product innovation, partially because
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness is negatively associated with entrepreneurs’ individual
creativity, and individual creativity is positively associated with product innovation.
Table VI shows the results of regression models used to test H4 to H6; that is, founding
teams’ creativity mediated the relationship between entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior and
product innovation.
Model 1 in Table V includes only control variables. It shows that entrepreneurs’
educational level is positively related to their individual creativity ( b = 0.277; p < 0.05).
Model 2 adds entrepreneurs’ moral awareness into the equation to test H1, which predicts
that entrepreneurs’ moral awareness is negatively related to their individual creativity. The
coefficient for entrepreneurs’ moral awareness is negative and significant at the 0.001 level
( b = 0.402; p < 0.001), supporting H1. Model 3 contains control variables using product
innovation as the dependent variable. Model 4 tests the link between entrepreneurs’ moral
awareness and product innovation, and it shows that entrepreneurs’ moral awareness has a
negative relationship with product innovation ( b = 0.442; p < 0.001). Model 5 includes
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and individual creativity in the regression equation. It
shows that entrepreneurs’ individual creativity is positively related to product innovation
( b = 0.597; p < 0.001), supporting H2. H3 predicted that entrepreneurs’ moral awareness is
negatively related to product innovation, partially due to the negative association between
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and individual creativity. Based on Model 4, entrepreneurs’
moral awareness is negatively associated with product innovation ( b = 0.442; p < 0.001).
When entrepreneurs’ individual creativity was controlled for in Model 5, however,
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness had a weaker effect ( b = 0.202; p < 0.05). We used
bootstrapping analysis to examine the significance of this effect (MacKinnon et al., 2002). A
significant indirect effect occurred for entrepreneurs’ moral awareness on product
13,2
434
CMS
variables
Table IV.
among major
and correlations
Descriptive statistics
Variables Mean SD Minimum Maximum 1 2 3 4 5 6
Notes: N = 113, p < 0.1, p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001 (continued)
Variables 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
1 Product innovation
2 Entrepreneur’s moral awareness
3 Entrepreneur’s ethical behavior
4 Entrepreneur’s individual creativity
5 Founding team’s creativity
6 Entrepreneur’s age
7 Entrepreneur’s gender
8 Entrepreneur’s education 0.00
9 Founding team’s size 0.02 0.05
10 Founding team’s age diversity 0.05 0.02 0.43
11 Founding team’s education diversity 0.06 0.08 0.28 0.40
12 Founding team’s gender diversity 0.02 0.01 0.15 0.07 0.06
13 Firm age 0.22 0.10 0.03 0.12 0.02 0.01
14 Firm size 0.01 0.16 0.01 0.14 0.01 0.01 0.29
15 Firm performance 0.06 0.14 0.06 0.11 0.10 0.06 0.08 0.37
Table IV.
innovation
435
Product
CMS innovation via individual creativity with a 95 per cent bootstrap confidence interval from
13,2 0.36 to 0.15, excluding zero (Preacher and Hayes, 2004). H3 was supported.
Table VI presents the results for H4-H6; that is, founding teams’ creativity mediated the
effect of entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior on product innovation. Model 1 contains only
control variables. Firm size is positively related to founding teams’ creativity ( b = 0.280;
p < 0.05). Model 2 shows that entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior is positively related to
436 founding teams’ creativity ( b = 0.553; p < 0.001), supporting H4. Model 3 contains only
control variables when product innovation is the dependent variable. Model 4 suggests that
the direct relationship between entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior is positively related to
product innovation ( b = 0.515; p < 0.001). Model 5 adds entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior and
Control variables
Entrepreneur’s age 0.147 (0.104) 0.144 (0.094) 0.007 (0.106) 0.004 (0.095) 0.082 (0.077)
Entrepreneur’s gender 0.002 (0.095) 0.043 (0.087) 0.006 (0.096) 0.044 (0.087) 0.018 (0.070)
Entrepreneur’s education 0.277 (0.098) 0.266 (0.089) 0.264 (0.100)
0.252 (0.089) 0.093 (0.075)
Table V. Firm age 0.132 (0.103) 0.133 (0.094) 0.071 (0.106) 0.073 (0.094) 0.007 (0.077)
Firm size 0.003 (0.106) 0.050 (0.098) 0.007 (0.109) 0.051 (0.098) 0.021 (0.079)
Regression results
Firm performance 0.123 (0.099) 0.169 (0.091) 0.035 (0.101) 0.016 (0.091) 0.085 (0.075)
for the relationship Industry dummies (included) (included) (included) (included) (included)
among
entrepreneur’s moral Independent/mediating variables
Entrepreneur’s moral awareness 0.402 (0.087) 0.442 (0.088) 0.202 (0.078)
awareness,
Entrepreneur’s individual creativity 0.597 (0.083)
Entrepreneur’s R2 0.260 0.394 0.230 0.392 0.607
individual creativity, Adjusted R2 0.146 0.293 0.111 0.290 0.537
and product
innovation Notes: N = 113, p < 0.1, p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001
Control variables
Team size 0.096 (0.101) 0.105 (0.081) 0.028 (0.111) 0.036 (0.095) 0.012 (0.089)
Age diversity 0.013 (0.108) 0.067 (0.087) 0.087 (0.118) 0.037 (0.102) 0.068 (0.095)
Educational diversity 0.102 (0.095) 0.155 (0.076) 0.053 (0.104) 0.003 (0.090) 0.074 (0.085)
Gender diversity 0.053 (0.094) 0.091 (0.075) 0.041 (0.103) 0.006 (0.089) 0.047 (0.083)
Firm age 0.122 (0.091) 0.088 (0.073) 0.024 (0.100) 0.008 (0.086) 0.048 (0.081)
Firm size 0.280 (0.104) 0.214 (0.083) 0.043 (0.114) 0.019 (0.099) 0.117 (0.095)
Firm performance 0.079 (0.097) 0.000 (0.078) 0.007 (0.107) 0.066 (0.093) 0.066 (0.086)
Table VI. Industry dummies (included) (included) (included) (included) (included)
Regression results
for the relationship Independent/mediating variables
Entrepreneur’s ethical behavior 0.553 (0.073) 0.515 (0.088) 0.262 (0.103)
among
Founding team’s creativity 0.458 (0.113)
entrepreneur’s ethical R2 0.322 0.571 0.184 0.400 0.490
behavior, Founding Adjusted R2 0.209 0.494 0.048 0.292 0.392
team’s creativity and
product innovation Notes: N = 113, †p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001
founding teams’ creativity into the equation. Founding teams’ creativity is positively related Product
to product innovation ( b = 0.458; p < 0.001), supporting H5. In H6, it was predicted that innovation
founding teams’ creativity mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ ethical
behavior and product innovation. Model 5 suggests that the direct relationships are
significant between entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior and product innovation, but they have a
weaker effect when the intermediate variable of founding teams’ creativity is added ( b =
0.262; p < 0.05). The bootstrap analysis suggested that the effect of entrepreneurs’ ethical
behavior on product innovation via founding teams’ creativity was significant with a 95 per 437
cent bootstrap confidence interval from 0.05 to 0.23, which excluded zero (Preacher and
Hayes, 2004), supporting H6.
Additional analyses
This paper challenges the assumption that moral awareness and ethical behavior are always
consistent. We suggest that it is common for entrepreneurs to have low levels of moral
awareness but high levels of ethical behavior (moral inconsistency resulting from low levels
of moral awareness) or to have high levels of moral awareness but low levels of ethical
behavior (moral inconsistency resulting from a lack of self-regulation). To empirically
investigate how these two types of moral inconsistency affected our results, we subtracted
entrepreneur’s moral awareness from entrepreneur’s ethical behavior. The result was
positive in 89 cases, 0 in six cases, and negative in 18 cases. This result suggests that the
majority of moral inconsistency between moral awareness and ethical behavior results from
a low level of moral awareness and a higher level of ethical behavior. Only 18 out of 113
entrepreneurs had higher levels of moral awareness than ethical behavior, reflecting a weak
self-regulation capability when facing an ethical situation.
To empirically test the effect of these two types of moral discrepancy between moral
awareness and ethical behavior, a dummy variable was included to indicate whether the
firm belonged to a group where the levels of entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior were larger than
their levels of moral awareness. After we included this indicator variable in all models, all
hypotheses were supported. The only difference was that an entrepreneur’s individual
creativity fully mediates the relationship between an entrepreneur’s ethical awareness and
product innovation. In addition, the founding team’s creativity fully mediates the
relationship between an entrepreneur’s ethical behavior and product innovation.
Discussion
Although ethics plays an increasingly important role in product innovation, little research
has directly examined the question of how an entrepreneur’s ethical level may affect a firm’s
product innovation (Brusoni and Vaccaro, 2017). This study explores this question in the
context of new ventures. We suggest that an over-emphasis on ethical behavior without
considering moral awareness in the current literature leads to an inadequate understanding
and contradictory findings of the relationship between an entrepreneur’s ethical level and
product innovation. We propose that an entrepreneur’s ethical level is a two-dimension
construct including moral awareness and ethical behavior and that moral awareness and
ethical behavior can be inconsistent. An entrepreneur can has a low level of moral
awareness but still exhibit a high level of ethical (leadership) behavior. An entrepreneur may
also have a high level of moral awareness but choose to behave unethically due to the lack of
self-regulation when facing ethical dilemmas. Because moral awareness and ethical
behavior affect product innovation in different ways, it is important to study the effects of
moral awareness and ethical behavior separately to unpack the effect of an entrepreneur’s
ethical level on product innovation.
CMS Consistent with the hypotheses, the findings indicate that an entrepreneur’s moral
13,2 awareness and ethical behavior affect product innovation differently. While moral
awareness affects product innovation through an entrepreneur’s individual creativity,
ethical behavior affects product innovation through a founding team’s creativity. In general,
an entrepreneur’s moral awareness is negatively associated with product innovation while
an entrepreneur’s ethical behavior is positively related to product innovation.
438 This study contributes to the literature on moral awareness and ethical leadership. The
current literature on moral awareness is scarce (Miller et al., 2014) and mostly focuses on its
antecedents (Wurthmann, 2017). This study provides empirical evidence on how the moral
awareness of entrepreneurs may matter in product innovation of new ventures. In addition,
many studies on ethical leadership were conducted in the setting of lower level supervisor-
subordinate relationships within organizations (Walumbwa et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017). This
study provides more empirical evidence on how entrepreneurs’ ethical behavior may affect
the creativity of the founding teams in new ventures.
This study also provides further evidence for the social cognitive theory, that not all
schemas benefit individuals (von Hippel et al., 1993). Schemas related to the moral
dimensions of a situation (i.e. moral awareness) may constrain an individual’s creativity,
which negatively affects product innovation.
The findings of this study have some practical implications for entrepreneurs who wish
to promote product innovation in new ventures. This study suggests that moral
inconsistency is common for new ventures. One reason of this inconsistency is that an
entrepreneur is truly naïve about moral issues (i.e. don’t have existing schemas for moral-
related issues) but strives to establish a culture of ethical behavior in the firm and among
founding members by dedicating more time and resources to develop ethical norms,
procedures, and ethical climates. In this situation, it is reasonable to predict that
entrepreneurs’ moral awareness levels will increase over time as entrepreneurs continue to
face moral dilemmas, learn how to identify moral issues, and revise their moral norms
(Campbell, 2017). As a result, the gap between moral awareness and ethical behavior can
decrease over time. Product innovation is more likely to result from entrepreneurs’ high
levels of ethical behavior rather than lack of moral awareness in the long run.
Another reason for moral inconsistency might result from the lack of self-regulation
(high levels of moral awareness and low levels of ethical behavior), i.e. entrepreneurs feel
strong pressure to do things that compromise their own values to survive at the initial
stages of new ventures’ development (Fisscher et al., 2005). The lack of self-regulation may
lead to unethical decision-making, tamper founding members’ creativity, negatively affect a
firm’s reputation and legitimacy, and ultimately negatively affect firm performance.
Therefore, moral disengagement of entrepreneurs cannot be a long-term sustainable
strategy for product innovation (Vohs and Baumeister, 2016).
This study has a few limitations that suggest opportunities for future research. First, it
considers individual creativity in entrepreneurs and group creativity in founding teams as
the only mediating variables affecting product innovation. However, good ideas resulting
from individual and team creativity need to be translated into product innovation, which
depends on a firm’s other resources and capabilities (Amabile et al., 1996). Future studies
can consider such factors when studying the antecedents of product innovation (Hsu and
Fan, 2010).
Second, this paper does not distinguish between incremental and radical innovations,
although entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior may affect both types of
innovations differently. Consequently, future research should measure them separately.
Third, entrepreneurs with low moral awareness may ignore ethical factors during start- Product
up stages when business success and survival are most important (Fisscher et al., 2005). innovation
However, entrepreneurs may develop higher moral awareness over time when their
reputations become at risk (Longenecker et al., 2006). Future research can investigate how
the dynamics of moral awareness and ethical behavior may change over time.
Fourth, this study is only exploratory. The study’s limited resources made it prudent to
hire a consulting firm and to use personal connections to generate the study’s sample.
Although the sample covered developed and underdeveloped regions and represented
439
different industries, the sample was not strictly representative of new ventures in China. In
addition, unique economic system and under-developed business policies and regulations
may also influence ethical level of Chinese entrepreneurs (Lu, 2009). Future studies should
collect data more systematically in China and/or other regions in the world to test the
study’s ideas.
Finally, this study shares a common concern over existing research on ethical leadership
that the data is collected from a self-reported survey method. (Brown and Treviño, 2014;
Chen and Hou, 2016). Collecting data from both the entrepreneur and the multiple founding
team members in one firm may alleviate this problem. Future studies can enhance our
understanding of ethical leadership by collecting alternative types of data, such as personal
interviews and objective secondary data.
Conclusion
This study challenges the common assumption in the literature of ethical leadership that
moral awareness and ethical behavior are always consistent. It departs from the existing
studies focusing on ethical behavior of leaders and examined separately the different
mechanisms through which an entrepreneur’s moral awareness and ethical behavior may
affect product innovation in a sample of 113 new Chinese ventures. The results show that
product innovation is enhanced when entrepreneurs have low moral awareness, which is
associated with a high level of individual creativity. Product innovation is also enhanced
when entrepreneurs behave highly ethically, which makes founding teams more creative.
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Appendix. Measurement of major variables Product
All measurements were estimated on a five-point Likert scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = innovation
strongly agree.
Product innovation (a = 0.72)
Zhang and Li (2010)
Entrepreneurs rated the relative success of their ventures in terms of:
Frequently introducing new products. 445
Being the first to introduce new products.
Launching new products rapidly.
Developing new products of superior quality.
Penetrating markets with new products.
Corresponding author
Lihua Wang can be contacted at: lihua@sfsu.edu
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