The Latest Research of Professor Qin Xin's Team of Our School Was Published in the International Authoritative Journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

Recently, the latest research results of the team of Professor Qin Xin (first author), Associate Researcher Xie Sujuan, and Assistant Professor Liang Xueji of our school “The dark side of entrepreneurs’ creativity: Investigating how entrepreneurs’ creativity increases the favorability of potential opportunities that harm nature” was published in the international authoritative journal of management Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. His research collaborators also include Professor Dean A. Shepherd from the Mendoza School of Business, University of Notre Dame; Associate Professor Lin Daomi (corresponding author) from the Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yat-sen University, and Assistant Professor Lin Shanshan from the School of Business Administration, Guangdong University of Finance.

The research, based on Moral disengagement theory, puts forward that creative individuals will creatively defend against behaviors that violate environmental principles, thereby increasing their preference for potential opportunities to damage the nature. The research proposes a new concept -- Nature disengagement -- to describe the defense against such violations of nature principles, and develops and verifies corresponding measurement tools. Two random intergroup experiments were further conducted among entrepreneurs to verify the prediction. The research results of both experiments support the theoretical model proposed by the research on the potential dark side of entrepreneurial creativity: the more creative entrepreneurs are, the more likely they are to disengage from the nature, and thus more likely to favor potential opportunities that damage the nature.

The research has made two very important breakthroughs and contributions to the existing entrepreneurship and innovation research and moral disengagement theory. First, the research proposes and discovers for the first time that entrepreneurial creativity may lead to a preference for potential opportunities to damage the nature, which provides an important theoretical basis for a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of entrepreneurial creativity. Second, the research transfers the moral disengagement theory to the context of nature, proposed the new concept of nature disengagement, and then applies it to entrepreneurial research, which provides a new theoretical perspective for understanding entrepreneurs' behaviors of damaging the nature and also helps expand existing moral disengagement theory.