Creative entrepreneurs' artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness: the guanxi network perspective

Abstract

PurposeThe dichotomy of views on “arts for arts sake” and “art must meet commerce” elicits the clash about how creative entrepreneurs encounter the dilemma of fulfilling personal satisfaction and chasing entrepreneurial aspiration along the entrepreneurial process. It is argued whether or not creative entrepreneurs can integrate artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness to disentangle the conflict and tension between art and commerce in the guanxi embedded culture context. The complex guanxi ties of creative entrepreneurs identified as bonding ties with families, bridging ties with friends and social ties with colleagues are presumed to activate personal and social values.Design/methodology/approachThe research design consists of two stages: face-to-face interviews and empirical survey. A total of four successful local creative entrepreneurs in craft arts were interviewed and asked questions related to their source of creative inspiration, market alertness and value creation. Findings derived from interviews enrich the questionnaire development of the empirical survey. The survey was conducted to realize the social phenomenon of creative entrepreneurs' guanxi, cognitive process and satisfaction with Taiwan's creative industry context. In total, 318 creative entrepreneurs’ responses were collected and analyzed by using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsResults suggest that guanxi networks lead to the acquisition of various social resources that are conducive to alertness in entrepreneurial opportunities and stimulate artistic creativity, which in turn gratify creative entrepreneurs' senses of entrepreneurial satisfaction with life, work and social contribution, as well as achieve higher entrepreneurial aspiration, perceived as social recognition and meaning of work.Practical implicationsResults of this study enrich the understanding of creative entrepreneurs and their awareness of balancing opportunity alerting and artistic creativity while starting creative businesses. Diverseness and closeness of guanxi networks can fill the gap between art and market and further pave the way to winning aspiration.Originality/valueThis paper advances the existing literature on creative entrepreneurship by adopting guanxi network theory to explore entrepreneurs' cognitive process in the linkage of artistic creativity and entrepreneurial alertness and their mediating effects on perceived entrepreneurial satisfaction and aspiration.

A social cognition perspective on entrepreneurial personality traits and intentions to start a business: Does creativity matter?

“…From this perspective, the entrepreneur may be viewed as an artist whose creative skills, abilities, and knowledge serve to trigger entrepreneurial intention (Camacho-Miñano and del Campo, 2017). Artistically creative entrepreneurs are described as more sensitive toward the arts and creative processes (Chen and Tseng, 2021). They are also open to unique and fresh ideas and possess the artistic capacity necessary to support their venturing endeavors (Zhao et al, 2018).…”

“…As discussed earlier, creativity plays a crucial role in shaping entrepreneurial intentions (Kumar and Shukla, 2019) and is acknowledged as a key antecedent of innovation (Anderson et al, 2014). As one domain of creativity, artistic creativity can stimulate entrepreneurial intention given that individuals with greater artistic creativity are often open to engaging in new experiences (Chen and Tseng, 2021). Individuals who enjoy artistic Creativity and entrepreneurial intention creativity are more prone to use their creative skills, abilities, and knowledge as a stimulus for entrepreneurial action (Camacho-Miñano and del Campo, 2017).…”

Sustainability of Artists in Precarious Times; How Arts Producers and Individual Artists Have Adapted during a Pandemic

“…Furthermore, building a career as an artist is complex. It involves the participation of different gatekeepers and often an entrepreneurial approach by the artist and can require a lengthy time to build a reputation or even a brand [9][10][11]. There is commentary too that the artist should be grateful for exposure or for an opportunity to work, even if that work is not paid for, as the artist is seen as someone who is always wanting/needing an audience [11][12][13]20].…”

“…An issue for artists, however, is whether 'sustainability' means that artists need to embrace aspects of the marketplace to survive [6,7]. The relationship between art and commerce is always somewhat fraught [8,9]. However, being 'sustainable' may require being more commercially orientated, rather than, say, artistically orientated [6].…”

“…Furthermore, artists often need to be entrepreneurial to survive economi-cally [10,11]. Where the balance lies between the need to adapt and pivot an arts practice to make it commercially viable, without losing the integrity of the work, is an important and often unresolvable issue [9][10][11] When we talk about the lives of artists (the term 'artist' is used here to describe anyone who has a professional artistic practice, whether it be as a musician, singer, actor, dancer, visual artist, craftsperson, film-maker, writer, video artist, and/or someone who works in a combination of artistic disciplines) during a time of great upheaval, it is important to remember too that most artists struggle to make a living under normal circumstances [7,[12][13][14][15]. Artists within a market-driven environment are always needing to adapt to survive, as the nature of their work and their circumstances, are usually in opposition to the expectations of a capitalist society [6,12,13,15].…”