How team cohesion develops in Chinese entrepreneurial teams : A qualitative research in six Chinese entrepreneurial teams

How team cohesion

develops in Chinese

entrepreneurial teams

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: Business administration NUMBER OF CREDITS: 30

PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Strategic Entrepreneurship AUTHOR: Shuyuan Yang and Yini Shi

TUTOR: Ziad el Awad JÖNKÖPING May 2020

A qualitative research in six Chinese entrepreneurial teams

Master Thesis in Business Administration

Title: How team cohesion develops in Chinese entrepreneurial team

- A qualitative research in six Chinese entrepreneurial teams

Authors: Shuyuan Yang and Yini Shi

Tutor: Ziad el Awad

Date: 2020-05-18

Key terms: Entrepreneurial team, team cohesion, teamwork, team development

Abstract

In this study, we explore what can affect the development of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team. We show the relationship between team members' cohesion and team performance over five main categories: (Ⅰ) Prior Condition, (Ⅱ) Conflict, (Ⅲ) Strategy, (Ⅳ) Task Interaction in the team, (Ⅴ) Social interaction in the team. Based on the research method of comparative cases, we selected six Chinese entrepreneurial teams as research objects. We show how individual behaviour affects the development of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team at the individual level and team level. More specifically, we consider that entrepreneurial team cohesion changes are more complicated than traditional teams. The team cohesion of the entrepreneurial team has certain randomness because there is no guidance from the leader. The influence of personal factors on team cohesion will be more intense. When the entrepreneurial team improves team cohesion, team members need to participate more.

Acknowledge

For this thesis, we appreciate all people who have ever provide help to us during the process. We can not imagine how to finish the thesis without your help.

First and foremost, we appreciate for our supervisor, Dr Ziad El-Awad. Without his patience, guiding and meaningful suggestion, we still lost ourselves in the literature. We appreciate for his commitments about our work and his advice give us a creative angle to explore our topic. Since it’s the first time for us to write an English thesis, we have lots of confused about the structure and content, Ziad provides useful examples and reference for us to understand and build the structure of our thesis. We learn a lot from the whole writing process not only about the method to explore our topic but also expression skills to make our thesis perform more formally.

Second, we want to appreciate for all case participants, they give us a really detailed story of their entrepreneurial team and provide us with the amount of meaningful idea about our research. Without their story, effort and active cooperation, we have no chance to conduct our research. Thirdly, We want to appreciate our family members. Their support is the biggest motivation for us to finish the thesis. Without their support and help, we even have no approach to touch all our interviewers.

Fourthly, we want to thanks the students in our tutoring group. All of them are excellent students, and their advice provides huge value for the improvement of our thesis. We also learn a lot from the process of opposing their thesis. It gives us lots of new ideas about the optimise our result as well.

Finally, we want to say thanks to each other. Even though it is a tough time for us to write the thesis, with support from each other, it has been a valuable experience for both of us.

Shuyuan & Yini 2020-5-18

Table of Contents

1.Introduction ... 1

2.Literature review ... 4

2.1 Entrepreneurial team ... 4

2.1.1 Difference between the entrepreneurial team and the corporate team ... 4

2.2 Cohesion ... 5

2.2.1 Function of Team Cohesion ... 6

2.2.2 The development of cohesion ... 7

2.3 Synthesis ... 8

3. Methodology ... 10

3.1 Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions ... 10

3.2 Research Design ... 11 3.3 Sample ... 11 3.3.1 Selection of sample ... 11 3.3.2 Description of samples ... 12 3.4 Research quality ... 14 3.5 Research ethic ... 15

3.6 Data coding and analysis ... 16

4. Finding ... 21

4.1 Conflict ... 21

4.1.1 Consistency of individual goals and team goals ... 21

4.1.2 Relationship Conflict ... 23

4.1.3 Task Conflict ... 25

4.2 Task Interaction in Team ... 27

4.3 Social Interaction in Team ... 29

4.3.1 Off-office Activities ... 29

4.3.2 Outward Bound ... 30

5. Discussion ... 37

6.Conclusion ... 41

7. Implementation ... 43

8. Limitation ... 46

9. Future Research ... 48

10. References list ... 49

Appendix ... 57

Figures

Figure 1 Data structure ... 20

Figure 2 Team cohesion framework in the entrepreneurial team ... 36

Tables

Table 2 Interviewers ... 13

Table 3 Research ethic followed ... 15

Table 4 Sample of the category “Task Interaction in Team” coding ... 16

Table 5 Sample of the category “Social Interaction in Team” coding ... 17

Table 6 Sample of category “conflict” coding ... 18

Table 7 Sample of the category “Prior Condition” coding ... 18

Table 8 Sample of the category “strategy” coding ... 19

Table 9 Ties in the different teams ... 33

Appendix

1. Introduction

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In this chapter, we introduce the basic background knowledge. Existing research emphasizes that cohesion is an important factor for team operation, but it does not clearly explain how the team cohesion of entrepreneurial teams develops. We aim to study this issue further.

_____________________________________________________________________ Almost 90 percent of new ventures were started by teams and not individuals (Beckman, 2006). Some researchers found that ventures created by entrepreneurial teams are more likely to survive and to achieve faster growth than ventures created by individual entrepreneurs (Cooper and Burno, 1977; Bird, 1989; Roberts, 1991; Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven, 1990). Entrepreneurial teams are the group of people who have a common target and act for the best interest of a new venture (Kamm et al., 1990). They are fundamental to the creation of the new venture as they are the primary catalyst of the creation (Cooper & Daily, 1996).

Research has emphasized the quality of the team members’ relationships affect the operation of the entrepreneurial teams (Forbes et al., 2006). For instance, the way team members interact and coordinate work together play a significant role in how ventures conduct their work venture performance (Clarysse & Moray, 2004). However, relationships between team members can take different forms. Relationships can take the form of friendship, family ties, or investment. Moreover, each of these relationships can influence the team differently. For instance, relationships based on family ties may require members of the family to share equal shares of equity to avoid problems related to greed (Kotha, & George, 2012). Relationships with investors, on the other hand, may require team members to perform tasks to keep the investor happy. As such, a different type of relationships may require members to behave in a certain way to sustain harmony and avoid conflict in the team. One concept that has been discussed to capture these dynamics is team cohesion.

Team cohesion refers to the harmonious or conflicting among team members (Harper, 2008). It is the degree of personal expectations and value, designed to interact with pairs of previously unfamiliar participants, thereby significantly affecting their attractiveness to colleagues (Steven & Jason, 1998). Group cohesion can influence how the member judges the ability of the group when the group faces the challenge. It is strongly correlated

with collective efficacy (David et al., 1999). Especially, high group cohesion makes members avoid social loafing in the group if they have the opportunity to contribute a valued and favourable group outcome (Steven & Jason, 1998). However, Ucbasaran et al. (2003) found that most entrepreneurial teams find it hard to retain their original team members in the long term, the new firm had lost at least one founder over five years. It may mean if the members cannot manage the group team very well, which will make some members judge the ability of the group with a low level and choose to leave. Although the link between team cohesion and team performance is important, there is little understanding of how team cohesion develops in the entrepreneurial team. Most articles about team cohesion conduct their research with sports teams or project teams but seldom with the entrepreneurial team (Kitching & Marlow, 2013; Heery & Noon, 2017). The entrepreneurial team is different from the corporate team. Corporate teams often follow pre-established goals and routines which have been already pre-set by their superiors (Covin & Slevin, 1991). Moreover, corporate teams have clear jobs and tasks to perform with a clear division of work. Some of the significant contributions discussed in the literature remain in how leaders train their employers (Kitching & Marlow, 2013; Heery & Noon, 2017,); how groups absorb employee’s knowledge (El-Awad, 2019). Studies focusing on the top management team, however, entrepreneurial teams start with a blank slate (Aldrich et al., 2002; Kamm et al., 1990; Cooney, 2005; Rauch et al., 2009). They lack routines and clear operating procedures which inform sustainable output (El-Awad, 2019). Entrepreneurial teams have to establish routines and ways of doing things without guidance from leaders, which requires that they share information and coordinate work among themselves. In this way, developing team cohesion becomes necessary to succeed in these efforts. We consider that the entrepreneurial teams are facing a challenge that

How to manage team cohesion within the team

In this thesis, we aim to understand how team cohesion develops in the Chinese entrepreneurial team. We are going to use a qualitative method to conduct our research. We chose six entrepreneurial teams in the same industry as our research examples. We conduct interviews of semi-structured with each member from these entrepreneurial teams to make sure we could understand how team cohesion work among team members and how they influence the performance of the entrepreneurial team. We identify five

main categories: (Ⅰ) Prior Condition, (Ⅱ) Conflict, (Ⅲ) Strategy, (Ⅳ) Task Interaction in the team, (Ⅴ) Social interaction in the team. These categories show pivotal stories of how members act in the team. Naturally, personal behaviour always affects the feelings of people around (Mach et al., 2010; Martha & Howard, 2011). That is, team members may play an important role in the development of entrepreneurial team cohesion.

In this study, we make an important contribution to the entrepreneurial team literature. We develop a model of entrepreneurial team cohesion development that explains what factors may affect the change of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team. More specifically, we tried to clarify the interaction between individual behaviour and team cohesion, and the impact of this interaction on the long-term operation of the team.

2. Literature review

______________________________________________________________________

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a theoretical background on entrepreneurial teams and cohesion. First of all, we introduced the definition and operation method of entrepreneurial team, and explained the differences between entrepreneurial team and traditional team. Then, we outline the definition of cohesion and how existing research suggests that teams improve cohesion. The synthesis of the literature review outlines our research direction.

_____________________________________________________________________

2.1 Entrepreneurial team

There is considerable debate regarding the definition of the entrepreneurial team, and no definition is widely accepted (Diakanastasi, Karagiannaki & Pramatari, 2018). Entrepreneurial teams generally define team members as those who hold ownership and control positions (Pal, 2004). Entrepreneurial teams usually have two or more individuals who establish a business in which they have an equal financial interest (Kamm et al., 1990). However, Schjoedt & Kraus (2009) describe the entrepreneurial team as two or more persons who have an interest (financial and nonfinancial) and commitment to a venture’s future and success. The entrepreneurial team members must share accountability (Katzenbach & Smith, 2003). Two or more members are interdependent and influence each other to achieve a specific goal together (Robbins & Judege, 2012). The entrepreneurial team should be a group of individuals that chiefly responsible for the strategic decision making and ongoing operation of a new venture (Klotz & Bolino, 2013). Based on the definitions discussed above, we know as an entrepreneurial team, the team members will have a shared belief – achieve a common goal, they will share ownership, affect each other and make a strategic decision together.

2.1.1 Difference between the entrepreneurial team and the corporate team

In the entrepreneurial team, there is not a clear routine or strategy to promote the team to work together ( Morris et al., 2011 ), the individual play a more important role in the operation of the team (Kamm et al., 1990; Katzenbach & Smith, 2003; Cooney, 2005). Members provide their knowledge, skills, interpersonal relationships, and other resources to enable the team to achieve their collective goals (Kor & Mahoney, 2000). Any decision requires all members to participate in the negotiation rather than some members of the

entrepreneurial team (Ucbasaran et al., 2003). There is no pressure from senior leaders. Members integrate their values or opinions into the operation of the company instead of following the values or opinions of some people. It makes the cohesion (how people work together) between the members of the entrepreneurial team more likely to affect the overall team than the members of the corporate team.

Some researchers pointed out that the team have to face some challenges when they try to improve team efficiency like how to identify individuals in the team (Saavedra, 2013), how the individuals perceive the team (Kremer, 2011), how the leader improve the environment (Baskerville, 2011). However, Bloom et al. (2010) consider that cohesion just is an outcome, the core challenge is how the leader or coach build their team. Team leaders can make different members interact with other members faster by designing appropriate team strategies (Moran & Toner, 2017). In daily work, team leaders can also adjust the relationship between different members by intervening between members. Franz et al. (2017) find that the method of project delivery and team integration can affect team cohesion. Through Bayesian analysis, Boton et al. (2015) also pointed out that psychological leadership style (positive or negative) has a certain effect on team cohesion and performance.

Overall, most researchers believed that the superior has a significant influence on the team ’s performance and cohesion among members. By adopting various solutions, the superior can effectively promote the interaction between team members to achieve the purpose of enhancing cohesion. However, as mentioned above, in the entrepreneurial team, all members have a direct impact on all activities of the team. It means that in the entrepreneurial team, it is difficult for us to position a superior as in the traditional team, all members are equal in the team. It may lead to the team-building model by the upper level is difficult to play a role in the entrepreneurial team. Therefore, we consider that the entrepreneurial team may need to adopt a new team-building model to achieve better teamwork and improve the cohesion among members.

2.2 Cohesion

Team cohesion could as the key to competitive advantage due to its influences on socialization inside firms (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). The earliest definition of team cohesion describes it as the force which works on members to remain in the team (Festinger, Schacter & Back, 1950). Team cohesion could provide team members with a

strong sense of belonging to the group. Meanwhile, it could create a harmony team atmosphere (Frank, 1957). Members would tolerate and trust each other in this group atmosphere (Bednar & Lawlis, 1971). Overall, team cohesion can adjust the team atmosphere, and it is a force that (1) could provide a sense of belonging to members, (2) create a harmonious atmosphere in the team.

Carron, Brawley & Widmeyer (1998) provide a new mind about team cohesion, and they consider that team cohesion is “a dynamic process that is reflected in the tendency of a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs” (p213). It highlights the connection between members that team cohesion could make members closer to each other. Team cohesion could be an integration of members and a strong commitment to members and/or team goals (Zaccaro et al., 2001). Montes, Moreno & Morales (2005) also agree that team cohesion as “firm’s ability to ensure that people working together in it have complementary skills and interactions that ease obtaining planned objectives and the creation of a team spirit” (p1161). Team cohesion can improve members’ willingness and efficiency to work, encourage members to participate more actively in their work. In summary, we believe that team cohesion could be a key factor that affects team efficiency. It can not only affect the psychological feelings and behaviour of team members but also change the overall atmosphere of the team. With the influence of team cohesion, team members will make their behaviour more conducive to the overall development of the team. It means that team cohesion is one of the main factors for the long-term operation of the team.

2.2.1 Function of Team Cohesion

Scholars have conducted lots of research and reveal that team cohesion could influence team performance, for example, After studying 49 entrepreneurial cases, Miller et al. (1998) claim that team cohesion could have a positive relationship with team performance. Meanwhile, the higher cohesion the team has, the better the team performs. In the entrepreneurial team, the role of cohesion would be more critical. Team cohesion could determine whether the entrepreneurial team can succeed (Zhang & Zhang, 2012).

Members of the team with a high degree of team cohesion would show a higher sense of responsibility (O’Reilly et al. 1989). They would be more willing to help their colleagues in daily work (Montes et al., 2005). This kind of interaction would help to promote the

quality of teamwork. Finally, it could improve the satisfaction and belonging of members (Vandyne, Cummings & Parks, 1995; Lee, 2003). A sense of belonging will reduce the willingness of members to leave the team to a certain extent to reduce the risk of staff turnover (O’Reilly et al. 1989). Team cohesion could create a team atmosphere that makes team members work hard to achieve better performance (Montes et al., 2005).

Team cohesion can regulate conflicts in the team (Ensley et al., 2002). In a cohesive team, members are more willing to know each other (Mickelson & Campbell, 1975). This behaviour reduces the risk of team fragmentation and reduces the degree of damage to the team from conflicts (Beal et al., 2003). Team cohesion could reduce the doubts of members about the motivations of different ideas and promote members’ tolerance of differences (Ensley et al., 2002). At the team level, team cohesion could enhance individual acceptance of group decisions (Zhang, 2014). With high-level team cohesion, the team can more easily produce better strategic decisions (O’Reilly et al., 1989; Barczak, Lassk & Mulki, 2010). Under this kind of team cohesion, team members prefer to share their knowledge and facilitate innovation behaviour (Xie & Wu, 2013). It gives the team more flexibility and greater adaptability to face different challenges (Hua & Chen, 2013). Therefore, how to improve team cohesion in the team has become a key challenge that a team has to face.

2.2.2 The development of cohesion

The development of team cohesion has two main ways, (1) setting a team goal (W. Neil & Kimberly, 1997); (2) leaders intervene directly (Caron et al., 2016). On the one hand, by setting team goals, it would be easier to resonate among team members (Friedley & Manchester, 2005). Team goal setting helps members clarify their positioning and responsibilities, which provides enough space for team members to exchange information (Widmeyer & Ducharme, 1997). Therefore, team members can better understand each other ’s thoughts and feelings. It promotes the team as a whole and improves the bonding between the individuals in the team. Setting up team goals creates a team focus on the team. Specific team focus can promote communication between the groups and boost the overall input and satisfaction of the team, all of which have proven to enhance team cohesion (Widmeyet, Brawley & Carron, 1985). Johnson & Johnson (1987) found that the influence of setting team goals on the three ways of team cohesion: (Ⅰ) the matching between personal goals and team goals produces higher goal acceptance and satisfaction;

(Ⅱ) members are more clear about what kind of action is useful to complete the team goals; (Ⅲ) members are aware of the importance of personal roles and behaviours required for successful collective action. Specifically, team goal guides and shapes the behaviour of members, and it emphasizes the cooperation of team members. By participating in the completion and set of team goals, each member knows other members and realizes what kind of actions they need to take to achieve group success. Members could find the results of other people ’s actions can improve their performance. For example, in the basketball team, everyone has a different division of labour. In order to complete the team's goals, each member will actively cooperate with other members and help each other (e.g. Helping powerful teammates to get more points) to ensure that the team can achieve the best performance in the match.

On the other hand, through team intervention, leaders promote the development of team cohesion (Croy & Eva, 2018). Team intervention provides clues for members. Therefore, members can build and develop their beliefs, and it changes members’ attitudes towards the team (Dodge & Crick, 1990; Salanick & Pfeffer, 1978). During team intervention, members can clearly perceive the traits that the leader desires. In order to protect their interests in the team, they will ingratiate to leaders. This behaviour has led to more common characteristics among different individuals. Members will change part of their behaviour to meet the requirements of leaders. It enhances the similarity between employees and makes it easier for individuals to have a sense of identity. The effect of this assimilation improves team cohesion. More specifically, the intervention of the leader strengthens the effect of team goals on improving team cohesion. Through leader intervention, members may be able to more quickly discover which behaviours are not needed by the team, which reduces the time required to build intimate relationships between members and reduces the cognitive difficulty. Members are more likely to realize that the results of other people ’s actions may strengthen their own performance, thereby enhancing their personal interests.

2.3 Synthesis

Current research focuses on discussing the development of team cohesion under a hierarchical structure (the team has a specific management team or operation departments) or how to develop team cohesion in the management team (Lin et al., 2019; Liu, 2013). Most scholars emphasized the importance of leadership style and leadership in improving

team cohesion (Franz et al., 2017; Caron et al., 2016; Liu, 2013). They provide knowledge about the influence factors of the development of team cohesion and explains the reason, but have little guiding meaning for the entrepreneurial team.

In the entrepreneurial team, every member could be the leader, or there is no specific leader in the team (Katzenbach & Smith, 2003). It may mean that, in the entrepreneurial team, the improvement of team cohesion is a more complicated or completely different thing. It makes the subject interesting as there is a lack of understanding of how team cohesion change or develop in the entrepreneurial team. It is necessary to research it as entrepreneurship team is a common organizational operating model (Che, 2015). In this article, we study different entrepreneurial teams, analyze and compare their stories, and explore the impact of key factors in the story on team cohesion. We hope to provide a theoretical model for improving the cohesion of entrepreneurial teams.

3. Methodology

______________________________________________________________________

This chapter aims to illustrate the basic philosophy assumption and how we design our research and the research ethic we considered during the whole research period. We explain the reason why we choose these samples and describe the basic information of our samples. Last, we will explain our data analysis method.

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3.1 Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions

When we conduct scientific research, we need to know our world view, namely, a paradigm which is the base of our scientific inquiry (Kuhn, 1962). Our ontological positions would determine the paradigm (Slevitch, 2011). Ontology is the basic assumption that we make about the nature of reality (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). The ontological positions illustrate what entities exist or can be said to exist and the relationship between basic categories of being (Slevitch, 2011). In this thesis, we choose relativism as our ontology. Researchers who use relativism as their ontology think “phenomena depend on the perspectives from which we observe them” (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018: p164). In other words, there are many “truth” and “fact” because there is no single or absolute standard to determine what the truth is. The fact is based on the viewpoints of the observer (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). However, ontology determines our way to inquire into the nature of the world (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Ontology could determine the epistemology (Slevitch, 2011). The interaction between these two theories determines the research method.

Our purpose is to understand how the team cohesion of the Chinese entrepreneurial team has changed. Interpretivism is more conducive to understanding the connotation of differences between different groups(Kuhn, 1962; Slevitch, 2011; Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Individuals have different characteristics in a different team. According to their experience, they would have different ideas about the development of team cohesion. It makes them take different actions based on their plans for improving team cohesion. Based on the results of their efforts, they reflect what the core of the development of team cohesion is. We consider that the development of team cohesion depends not only on individuals but also results from interactions between members. Perhaps the same perception or event will have different effects on different teams (the degree of change in

team cohesion). To understand how these entrepreneurial teams develop their team cohesion, we need to observe their behaviour in the process of improving team cohesion, analyze and explain how their behaviour and results are related. Maybe one behaviour or event could have a positive effect on cohesion development but have a negative effect on the cohesion development in another team. As we said in the epistemology assumption, all of these are “truths”, but we need to understand these different “truths” to conduct our research.

3.2 Research Design

The research built on six Chinese entrepreneurial teams. Due to the influence of factors such as team composition, interviewees’ opinions will be different. The development of team cohesion is a complex phenomenon. The single case study could not help us to understand the development of team cohesion deeply. However, multiple case studies could “recognize complexity and embeddedness of social truth” (Bassey, 1999: p23). Therefore, we decide to use the multi-case research in this thesis.

We decide to use qualitative research as our methods for the thesis. The core aim of qualitative methodology is to acquire a better understanding of the phenomena for study participants (Slevitch, 2011) which consistent with our purpose.

We aim to understand the development of team cohesion, but the development of team cohesion is a kind of subjective concept. Therefore, we decide to use the semi-structured questionnaire. Through this kind of method, we give interviewees sufficient space to explain their story and show their emotion, but interviews will not lose control in the interview. It helps us to have a more comprehensive understanding of what is happening in each sample during the process of team cohesion improvement. The content of the questionnaire, we use the cohesion measurement form arise by Henry, Arrow & Canni (1999) as a blueprint to explore the big event happened in interviewee’s experience and related change of their subjective feeling to team and individuals.

3.3 Sample

3.3.1 Selection of sample

Our samples are six Chinese entrepreneurial teams. We consider that this way could reduce the interference of cultural factors on the development of team cohesion. The same native language also helps us to understand more clearly what the interviewee expressed.

Based on our cohesion in the research team, we interviewed at least half of the entrepreneurial team members (some members of the failed group cannot get in touch) to get a comprehensive understanding of the development of team cohesion. As we mentioned in the research design, we aim to understand the development of team cohesion through the comparison between teams. We plan to compare two kinds of teams that one has a bad experience of cohesion and another has a good experience of cohesion. Cohesion is the ability to stick members together (Carron, Brawley & Widemeyer,1998) when a team cannot maintain good teamwork and choose to dissolve, the team cohesion must be at a low level. Based on this consideration, we sign the team with bad cohesion as a failed team which has already dissolved or over half members leave the team, team with good cohesion as a successful team which the team still maintains good teamwork and develops normally.

The different industry may have different requirement about the team cohesion, and the difference between industries may influence our judgment of a failed team or successful team. In order to reduce the side effect caused by these external factors, all samples should come from the same industry and the same location.

These entrepreneurial teams are located in the Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, while the real estate industry has been one of the fastest developing industry and it has a low entry barrier (Dong, 2017). Choosing the location and industry would exclude other external influence factors like the support from the government and make a relative ideal environment for our research. Due to CDPR, we use some code name to instead all the names of companies and interviewers.

3.3.2 Description of samples

We code six entrepreneurial teams like SA, SB, SC FA, FB and FC. The letter “S” or “F” indicates the situation of the team. “S” represents it is the successful team and the team operates until now while “F” means the team failed that over half original team members left the team or the team dissolved directly.

SA and FA are the same company, this company includes two entrepreneurial teams due to the leave of over half original entrepreneurial team members in 2011, and then the left members form a new entrepreneurial team with new members. The company in 2011 failed because most original team members leave the team, but it operates well after 2011. In order to distinguish the two different entrepreneurial team, we code the failed team as

FA and the successful team as SA.

start year end year size of the team

SA 2006 2011 4 FA 2011 now 4 FB 2015 2020 3 SB 2017 now 2 FC 2011 2015 3 SC 2018 now 2

Table 1Basic information of the sample team

Name Team

Cooperation

time(Year) interview time

FA1 FA 5 108 minutes

FA2 FA 5 78 minutes

SA1 SA 9 54 minutes

SA2 SA&FA 14 58 minutes

FB1 FB 4 63 minutes FB2 FB 4 55 minutes SB1 SB 3 67 minutes SB2 SB 3 62 minutes FC1 FC 5 50minutes FC2 FC 5 73minutes SC1 SC 2 52 minutes SC2 SC 2 45 minutes Table 2 Interviewers

SC2 in team SC and FC1 in team FC are the same people, FC1 leave the team FC for three years and restart a business with SC1, they formed a new team.

3.4 Research quality

We follow the criteria set by Guba (1981) to make sure the quality of our research. We create the trustworthiness of our research from credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability four aspects (Guba, 1981).

For the credibility of the research, we choose to conduct triangulation and member check to ensure the quality of our research. Triangulation ensures the quality of research from the cross-check data and interpretation (Guba, 1981). Since we have six entrepreneurial teams as our samples, the resource of our information would be various. Meanwhile, each team we interview over half or all number of team members (for some teams, some members lost contact). The information collected from each entrepreneurial team all has at least two sources. Therefore, we could cross-check the information about each team to make sure the credibility of our data. We also use this method to provide the confirmability of our research, because triangulation would be an efficient way to certify the confirmability as well (Guba, 1981).

Another method we used to ensure the credibility of our research is members checks, and we have a conclusion part with team members after the finish of the interview. We double-check with events and subjective feeling with interviewers. It makes sure we record and understand the right information.

We do a purposive sampling to guarantee the transferability of our research. Even though we give some limitation of our sample to reduce the side-effect caused by the external environment, we maximise the range of our samples. We choose the sample according to some characteristics like (Ⅰ) successful team VS failed team; (Ⅱ) team members know each other at the beginning VS team members do not know each other at the beginning; (Ⅲ) team with big scale business VS team with small scale business and so on. These different characteristics ensure our sample cover as much information as possible. In order to promote the dependability of our research, we use stepwise replication (Guba, 1981). After we finished the transcription of all interview, we code the data and give a general data structure for future analysis separately. When both of us finished the coding and analysis part, we put our result together to compare the difference in our result. For the difference part, we select the original information out and repeat the coding and analysis behaviour once and once again until our result is consistent.

3.5 Research ethic

Due to some of the participants of our research belongs to some failed entrepreneurial team, and the relationship between two participants could be bad, so we need to make sure the information security. Moreover, in order to make sure that our research result is true, and our participants will not be hurt., we follow the research ethic raised by Bell and Bryman (2007).

1 No harm for participants

Participant protections 2 Respect for participant dignity

3 Get informed and free consent from participants 4 Protect private information of participants 5 Promise to keep the research data confidential

6 Respect for the anonymity of participants and organizations 7 Keep the integrity of the research purpose

Research protections 8 Statement of partnership, source of funds and conflict of interest

9 Keep honesty and transparency on research communication 10 Avoid any misleading or false research findings

Table 3 Research ethic followed

For all the interviews, we claim that the whole interview would be privacy. We only use the collected information for our research, and we promised that we would not let others know the content of the interviews. Ten minutes would be used to introduce the theme and content of the interview. The interview starts after we confirm that interviewees have been familiar with the content. Our interview would be recorded as voice audio, and before we record the interview, we ask for permission first. We also promised that once the work of transcript of interview finished, we would delete the record. Also, if interviewer shows their unwillingness to be recorded during the interview process, we would stop the record immediately.

In the purpose to protect the interviewers’ private information, we hide all the company and personal name and give code to distinguish different interviewers. For example, “FB2” means the interviewer is the second member of failed team B.

3.6 Data coding and analysis

To gain a deeper understanding of the interviewee’s discourse, understand what influence the development of team cohesion, it is necessary to code all the data and figure out how the team cohesion changed. We record All empirical data. We identified all significant events that undertake in the whole development of the team to code the raw material. The two authors separately classified and analyzed the same raw data by MAXQDA. This method reduces cognitive bias caused by personal factors and helps researchers analyze the interview data more comprehensively (Yin, 2018). After completing the first classification analysis, we compared two different encoding results. For the different parts of them, we review the original interview record and re-discuss the difference code. The original information is enormous as we want to know the whole development history of the entrepreneurial team. From the development history of entrepreneurial, we could identify different events undertaken by different teams. We determine the significant events that happened in the development of the whole team. Meanwhile, in order to explore the influence of these events with team cohesion, we observe the team cohesion before and after the event.

The data analysis reveals that the most frequent events that happened in the entrepreneurial team are task interaction. Since the entrepreneurial team is a team, every member should work together to achieve a common team goal. The first category is the “task interaction in the team”, it adopts two activities. One is task cooperation that team members help each other to accomplish the task. Another is task communication which describes team members gather together to exchange the experience of the task and so on communication behaviour.

1st code subcategory category The team member

has communication relevant team task

Team communication Task interaction in the team

“we held experience shared seminar in a regular frequency to discuss the problems that we meet in work together.”

Second most frequently events that happened in the entrepreneurial team exposed by the data analysis, it is the social interaction in the team. In our case, all entrepreneurial members admit the importance of these group social activities. Entrepreneurial members believe through the group social activities. Members could develop a closer relationship with each other due to (Ⅰ) more time together; (Ⅱ) know each other better. The group activities that team members participate has two forms. One is the formal activities (outward bound), and another is informal activities (off-office activities).

1st code subcategory category off-office

activities group activities Social interaction in the team

“We go to Kara-Okay per week and have office dinner at least once per week.”

Table 5 Sample of the category “Social Interaction in Team” coding

These two main categories include the most frequently happened events in the development process of entrepreneurial teams, whatever successful or failed teams. The first two categories describe the common events that happen in all six samples.

From the analysis of initial information, two groups of samples (successful teams and failed teams) show a big difference in the events relevant to the conflict. Conflict describes “A process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another” (Wall & Callister. 1995, p.517). Successful teams show high consistent of person and team goal, task conflict and controlled relationship conflict. Failed teams show inconsistent of person and team goal, task conflict and obvious relationship conflict. “Composition of personal and team goal” describe whether team members have the same goal with the whole team. “Task conflict” describes “members have differences in the content of the tasks performed, including differences in viewpoints, ideas, and opinion” (Jehn, 1995, P.258). “Relationship conflict” represents “interpersonal incompatibility among members, which typically includes tension, animosity, and annoyance among members within a group” (Jehn, 1995, P.258). We expect to figure out the influence caused by conflicts to the team cohesion through the comparison between the successful team and the failed team. All these events (task conflict, consistent of personal and team goal, relationship goal) made up of the main category that “conflict”. For this category, we not only include the process that

also include the solve of the conflict. It includes the whole developing process of conflict: the cause of conflicts, the development of conflicts and the solution of conflicts to observe how conflict influence the team cohesion.

1st code subcategory category Team members have different

opinions relevant to the task Task conflict conflict

“Absolutely we have lots of different opinions about the task, for example, two members touch one common customer together, and we would argue for the belongs of the common customer.”

Table 6 Sample of category “conflict” coding

Moreover, in order to have a full view of the development of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team, we need to consider about the “prior condition” that describes the relationship between entrepreneurial team members before the form of a team. Since entrepreneurial team members they choose each other, we want to know why they make this choice, why these people decide to form an entrepreneurial team together. We can observe the starting point of the cohesion of the entrepreneurial team through this behaviour. What role that prior condition plays in the later period. Therefore, the fourth category is “prior condition” which describes the relationship of team members before the formulation of the entrepreneurial team.

1st code subcategory category Team members know each other

before the formalization of the entrepreneurial team

Prior ties Prior condition

“We are neighbours for over 20 years, and there is no shame for us to point out each others’ drawback.”

Table 7 Sample of the category “Prior Condition” coding

The data analysis has already shown us a whole process that entrepreneurial team develop: what happens before form a team (prior condition) and what happens after structure the team (conflict, task interaction and social interaction). A mature team need a strategy to keep adjusting its developing direction. Namely, we only have consist of the development of the team is not enough. We need to think about how to maintain the long-term operation

of the team. Here, we name a category as “strategy” to mark the behaviour or consciousness that in the team to regular members’ behaviours. However, the interviews show that the six cases almost have no business strategy due to the small size of the team. Moreover, based on the original purpose to set this category, we mark the routine whatever a clear state one or implicit one in the team as the strategy since the routine could also regular members’ behaviour. The “team routine” not only include the formulate of team’s implicit or explicit rules and regulations but also contain the degree that team members follow the rules and regulations.

1st code subcategory category Team has clear or implicit rules

and regulations Team routines strategy

“We have clear rules to stimulate our working time to reduce the unfair that everyone would have the same salary for different working hours.”

Table 8 Sample of the category “strategy” coding

We explore the main events happened in the daily operation (conflict, task interaction and social interaction), consider the influence brought by prior condition, and recognize the regular force to members’ behaviour leads by team routines. Through this way, we made an operational model of the entrepreneurial team, and the development of cohesion is built based on this model. We expect to compare the successful and failed team in each main category to see the influence that these main parts of team developments contribute to the development of team cohesion.

4.

Finding

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We conduct our analysis part follow the main category that we mentioned in the data structure. We observe the situation of team cohesion before and after the events and conclude the influence that these events brought to the development of team cohesion. Since events that happened in each entrepreneurial team are different, we compared main categories (events) between succeed team and failed team to see how cohesion developed under the influence of these events.

_____________________________________________________________________

4.1 Conflict

All six samples, whatever successful or failed team, have conflicts within the team. Every interviewee expresses that team conflict can not avoid during the development of team (e.g. FB2:“We are not the same person, there is no doubt that we would have different ideas about the task or other stuff.” ). The conflicts within the team have a direct influence on the development of team cohesion. Based on our subcategories, three different types of conflict would happen in the entrepreneurial team.

4.1.1 Consistency of individual goals and team goals

The team goal is closely related to the task cohesion (MacCoun, 1996), which discusses the teams’ effort to achieve the common work-related goals (Chiocchio & Essiembre, 2009). When personal goal consistent with the team goal, the individual effort would work for the team. Otherwise, the individual effort would work for private profit:

FB1:“ She uses the working time to prepare for the examination of certification of the

associate constructor, (this behaviour is) super selfish. She only cares about herself but not our team.”

SB1:“ I do not care much about her actions since I know we have the same goal,

and whatever she did is to achieve the common goal as soon as possible.”

Members’ private profit suffered when personal goal inconsistent with team goal. The loss of private profit is a trigger of members’ discontent emotion. With the development of such discontent emotion, members have the displeasure would not only towards one specific member but towards the whole team. The negative emotion that brought by the

loss of own profit affects the enthusiastic and weaken the motivation to keep working in the team:

FC2: “They (the other two members) just want to do their own activities all day, the working time became shorter and shorter. Even during the working time, they just chat with others while the chatting content is totally irrelevant to work. I am the only one who earns money in the team, and the income still needs to share with these free-riders. I am so disappointed with them, and I pointed out this problem but useless. The whole team fell, and I have no motivation and enthusiastic about keeping working in the team.”

Consistency of individual goals and team goals could reduce the worry of loss of private goal. Each team member works hard not only for their personal goals but also for the team goals in the team. The achievement of team goal means the achievement of a personal goal, and the achievement of a personal goal could make sure that members have enough motivation to work for the team.

SB2: “If I could attract more customers means I could earn more and the company would

have a bigger market as well. That is what I want, make sure I would have a considerable salary, and my company could have further development.”

The consistency of individual goals and team goals could ensure the safety of members’ profit and let members realize that whole team value them. Working atmosphere get improved as well, which promotes work enthusiasm.

SA1: “The team made specific rules to make sure that other members will not plunder

our customers. I think the team not only consider the common profit but also make sure the safety of our profit. I am willing to work for the further development of our team as I could earn more through this way. ”

SC2: “Both of us want to have a respectable income and have a good team working

atmosphere. I enjoy working with the team.”

Combined the influence that consistency of personal and team goal both in successful teams and failed team, we get following propositions:

Proposition 1a: Consistency of individual goals and team goals has a positive influence on the development of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team;

Proposition 1b: Inconsistency of personal and team goal has a negative influence on the development of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team

FA2 mentioned in his interview, the inconsistency of personal and team goal has become the radical reason for his leave. Compared with experience in other failed team, all members in a failed team happened to coincide with analyzing the radical reason for their leave/ dissolve team as the inconsistent of personal and team goal:

FB1: “She (another member of the team) did not focus all her effort on our team, she has

her private mind, and she did not want to work with together to achieve our common goal—earn more money. She cares more about her profit, and I do not want to share the common team profit with her. Why she effortless but have the same profit with me? It is unfair. I do not want to cooperate with her anymore, as well as stay in the team.”

FB2: “I have my own family, and I need to put more effort into the education of my older

daughter, and my younger daughter is too little. I need to raise her. I have no more extra effort to work. So, I want to leave the team.”

FC2: “They (other members) did not work hard but want to play every day, and this makes

me feel disappointed towards the whole team, I do not want to continue (to operate the team).”

FC1: “Prefer work, I want to play Majiang, and my son was going to marry at that time,

I need to prepare for the wedding and make preparation to raise my future grandson, so kept working in the team would be hard for me. Thus I decided to exit the team.”

Whatever the inconsistency is relevant or irrelevant with work content, we would see that almost all of the failed team choose to leave or dissolve the team due to the inconsistent of their own or others personal goal and common team goal. Since the different work goal, every member has a different work orientation, which leads to a reduced ability of the team to bring members together. Meanwhile, the team members lose the motivation to work together. The reason may be the members find another focus point of their work or life, also could be the negative emotion (like unfair) which caused by the inconsistency. Taken above consideration together, we get the following proposition:

Proposition 1c: The inconsistency of personal goal and team common goal could terminate the development the team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

Some scholars consider that the relationship conflict would hurt the cohesion (Tekleab, Quigley & Tesluk, 2009). Satisfaction declines due to relationship conflicts, preferences for other members and willingness to stay in the team decrease (Amason, 1996; Ensley, Pearson, & Amason, 2002; Jehn, 1995; Peterson & Behfar, 2003). One main function of team cohesion is to stick the team members together and maintain the team members, relationship conflict weakens the force and builds estrangement between members. Whatever in the successful team or failed team, relationship conflict has a similar influence. For instance, FB2 describes the influence of relationship conflict as:

“There is one event that they (other members) did not deal with the problem follow my opinion, and they even criticized my plan. All of us were unhappy with that, and we started to quarrel with each other, gradually, they not only criticized my work plan but criticized my ability and made me felt very unhappy and upset. To be honest, I was not as close as I had been with them.”

Once relationship conflict occurs, it leads to the negative influence on the members’ relationship at that time. Team members start to have antipathy, the stick ability of team declined based on this negative influence and team members start to lose enthusiasm and motivation to work in the team. Hence, we proposed：

Proposition 2: Relationship conflicts lead to the decline of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

The relationship conflict would have a negative effect on the development of team cohesion. The resolution of relationship conflicts may eliminate the impact of emotional conflicts. Some interviewees, especially in the successful team, express that team members became more closer after the solve of relationship conflict since they knew each other better and had more tacit understanding in the following days. The deeper understanding of each other make future cooperation more and more fluently:

SA2: “I used to argue with my colleagues once. After that, we even did not speak to each

other. A few days later, he apologized to me through one of our common friends, and we solve the conflict. Our relationship even became better after the conflict, as we all know which method would be the most suitable one to stay together.”

There are some interviewees in the successful team and the failed team. They have different views on resolving relationship conflicts. Due to the Chinese shame culture,

members would give a false signal that they forgive each other (Hua & Chen, 2013). the team will not mention the relationship conflict. There is no communication channel among parties with the conflicts after the given of the false signal. It is awkward to mention the conflict once and once again, and every member chooses to pretend that they have solved the relationship conflict. As a result, the negative influence caused by relationship conflict still exists. The misunderstanding between members could be more heavily in the future due to the estrangement between team members.

SA1: “I knew another two members have this kind of relationship conflict, and the leader

solves the conflict in time. The two members apologize to each other at that time, but after that, they almost have no communication. Though they did not argue with each other, their relationship could not recover like before anymore.”

FC2: “I know she has lots of comments about me. I also know we have a relationship

conflict. I tried to solve the problem, and I communicated with her for this several times. However, each time, she just told me that she did not care about that, and we still have a good relationship. However, when I went outside for our business, she started to say bad words about me, and I could feel obviously that she never said true words to me after that.”

Based on the above information, for the deal of relationship conflict, we could hardly have a proposition. Since we have no method to confirm the conflict has been solved indeed or just for a false harmony.

4.1.3 Task Conflict

Many scholars prove that task conflict has a positive relationship with cohesion (Amason, 1996) while some academic articles consider the task conflict would still bring negative effect to the team cohesion (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). When the relationship conflict gets control, whatever in the failed team or the successful team, the interviewees expressed that the task cohesion could help to facilitate their development of team cohesion. The task conflict could let team members understand each other deeper and get a better result through the comparison and combination of different ideas. Through task conflicts, team members could establish their working tacit quickly. The establishment of work tacit could become a strong force to retain the team members since the process to establish another working tacit with new people would be costly.

FB2: “We kept quarrelling for our business for almost two months and found lots of

problems. Through the task conflict, we got some better solutions to solve our problem, and we develop a tacit understanding of work. The tacit understanding makes us work more smoothly in the afterwards working time.”

“The tacit understanding with each other is one of the significant reasons for me to stay in the team because it would be hard as well as costly to develop such tacit understanding with another new team.”

The tacit understanding could help the team to work more effectively since each member has more knowledge about other members’ preferences, habits. Since it does not waste time in understanding the ideas/behaviours of others, there is a deeper understanding of the entire team can improve work efficiency. It strengthens the team ’s ability to retain members because team members are unwilling to put in extra effort to establish a tacit understanding with other non-team members. Thus, we propose:

Proposition 3a: With the control of relationship conflict, task conflicts lead to increase of team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

We compared the failed team and successful team to see the result of task conflict with and without the control of relationship conflict. With the control of relationship conflicts, task conflicts only discuss the different opinions towards the working task. Team members understand that the disagreement of opinions does not mean the denial of members’ personality. After resolving the task conflict, the relationship between the team members will be fine:

SA2: “If we have any disagreement about work with each other, we will have a kind of

seminar immediately. Moreover, we know that even we quarrel with each other, all the disagreement is about the different methods to accomplish our task but not for one member him/herself. We know what social life is and what is a task, and we will not confuse the emotion of work with the emotion of personal life.”

While without the control of relationship conflicts, task conflicts would develop from the disagreement of opinions to denial of personality, namely, transfer to new relationship conflicts:

FB1：“The disagreement of candidates of directors is the beginning of our breakdown

members) plan. I do not know why she seems to develop the task conflict to some personal conflicts. She started to avoid communication with me and talk some bad comments about me behind my back.”

The transfer from task conflict to relationship conflict hurt the team cohesion in Case B and eventually lead to the dissolve of the team. In the view that we propose that:

Proposition 3b: Without control of relationship conflicts, task conflicts could transfer to new relationship conflicts and decreased the team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

4.2 Task Interaction in Team

Two subcategories under this category: task cooperation and task communication. To our surprise that all six teams have excellent task communication or cooperation at the beginning.

FA1: “At the very beginning, most of us have no idea about how to operate the business

event. We also have much leisure time since we did not have many customers. So, we have this kind of experience shared seminar every day. Furthermore, if someone has problems with the task, we will discuss the questions in the seminar, and everyone participates the seminar positively to raise their own opinion. I think our team cohesion was the highest at that time.”

SC1: “I do not know this area and my partner has over ten year- experience in this field.

At the very beginning, my partner is my teacher, and she teaches all the necessary knowledge in the field. Whenever I have any question, I would ask her. Because we are neighbours, it is very convenient to communicate with her.”

All the interviewees claim that they feel a high-level cohesion at that time. The frequent communication sticks all members together, and team members’ goal becomes consistent gradually through this period. All members know what they fight for and work together to figure out a more efficient way to achieve their common goal. Task communication help to promote the cognition between members.

The difference exposed in the middle and later period of team life. Succeed teams maintain a regular frequency to have task communication (e.g. SC1: “We have

cooperated for two years, but until now we still keep the habit that communicates with each other immoderately whenever we meet problems in our work.”; SA1: “We have this

kind of routine that we need to organize an experience shared seminar per two weeks if someone has specific task-related questions we could also help an emergency seminar to discuss a good solution together.”). We find that failed teams ignore task communication.

Members from failed teams’ complaint that the frequency of experience shared seminar declined since every team member thought they are good enough to handle all the task. Team members lose the opportunity to study from different ideas, and the lack of communication leads to the misunderstanding of the task:

FA2: “After one year, I could feel the frequency of experience has an obvious decline. All

team members thought they have grasped all crucial knowledge for their task and become more and more arrogance. In the seminar, the discussion atmosphere is not as open as before, and I could feel they are unwilling to accept different ideas. Gradually, the seminar loses its meaning. We seldom have such a seminar. Moreover, the sharp conflict about task occurred from that time as well.”

FB1: “After two months, I thought we have already developed a mature tacit

understanding of work with each other, hence move the focus point from the communication of task to expand our business. However, I found they did not know what I want them to do, and I was too busy to deal with the problem of a new market and have no time to continue the task communication.”

Based on the comparison between the successful team and failed team, we propose that:

Proposition 4a: A frequently task communication increases the team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

There is also a wired phenomenon get our attention, that is the succeed team B. The members in the team do not have much task communication, but the team maintain a good situation and good cohesion for three years.

SB1: “We do not have such experienced shared seminar because our task is

complimentary, and we have no common experience to share.”

The task of each member in the succeed team B are complementary. They have no common topic to discuss the task. However, they maintain good team cohesion. We consider that the reason is that they could not leave each other to work alone. The connection between their task instead of the efficient of task communication to maintain the team cohesion. Overlapped task allocation decrease the cooperation of task since the

team would still work with part of members. Members will not have a strong connection between their task when the frequency task communication become less and less:

FA2: “After the cancel of experience shared seminar, the conflict about the common task

has become more, and more sharply, I knew two members fight for one common customer, I was the intermediator at that time. After the fight, the two members completely break.”

The harmony atmosphere of successful team B is due to they do not have overlapped task. Hence, their profit will be hurt, and there is no need for them to communicate to avoid the potential task conflict. They do not need to foster member cognition to strengthen the sense of team since they could not operate the team alone. The strong connection of their task would stick members together and remain members. Therefore, we proposed as following:

Proposition 4b: A completely complimentary team task corporation could moderate the relationship between task communication and team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.

4.3 Social Interaction in Team

Team members get together not only because of the work but also could due to the group activities. There are two forms of group activities can be identified in the six entrepreneurial teams. One is the outward bound, and another type of group activity is off-office activities including office dinner, holiday banquet and Kala-okay.

4.3.1 Off-office Activities

Except for Failed team C, each team frequently has off-office activities. Because of team size, the frequency of off-office events arranges from twice a week to once a month. Interviewers express that the off-office activities helped to relax the team atmosphere and closed the distance between members.

SA2: “Off-office activities is an efficient way to know each other. I am not familiar with

the whole team at the very beginning. After several times of off-office activities, we are all good friends.”

FB2: “Off-office activities allow us to release our true moods. Work is very serious; you

must be careful and strict. Nevertheless, off-office would be more leisure, and you could say whatever you want, for example, you may be a little unhappy with your members’

behaviour today. You can say it directly on the office dinner, drink alcohol together, and then the unhappiness would remove.”

Off-office activity shorter the distance between team members and create a new and informal communication channel for team members to express themselves. The aim of shorter of members’ distance is to accomplish the role transformation of teammates, from an unfamiliar colleague to familiar friends. The shorter distance between team members, the more willingness members show to work together. This process strengthens the stick ability of the team since the connection between familiar friends is more than unfamiliar colleagues. Meanwhile, a new and relaxed communication platform could kill the potential relationship conflict and finally, facilitate the development of team cohesion. Based on this information, we propose:

4.3.2 Outward Bound

Opposite the informal form of off-office activities, outward bound is a more formal activity organized by the team. Outward Bound allows participants to build self-awareness, enhance understanding among team members, and improve team spirit and team cohesion (Gong & Zhang, 2020). Outward bound program in Chinese market add a few items which suitable for Chinese context and aim to facilitate participants encourage and build their team cognition. Through the outward bound, the relationship between participants become closer and participants cooperate capability are expected to be strengthened (Li, 2008). Interviewees describe the feeling of outward bound as:

SA2: “Through the outward bound, I am touched deeply. That is the first time for me to

have such a strong feeling of team spirit. It gives me a brief that we could do any if we work together. During one month after the outward bound, I could experience the passion from my teammates as well as myself. Everyone gathers together to flight for our business. The relationship between teammates has dramatically improved at that time. Even the challenge in outward bound we could overcome easily, what else could be our barrier?”

SA1: “The outward bound shocked me, it told me what a team is, all the team are just

like family, you could rely on your team members.”

Proposition 5a: Off-office activities strengthen team cohesion in the entrepreneurial team.