Abstract: The successive occurance of employees’ quitting to start their own business indicates that there is a “contagion” effect among colleagues as those who stay are usually impressed and even motivated by the entrepreneurial move of the resignees with surface similarity. However, existing researches lack an in-depth exploration into the mechanism underlying this phenomenen. Based on the social comparison theory, this paper constructs a moderated mediation model by taking the surface similarity of entrepreneurial colleagues as the independent variable, entrepreneurial intention as the dependent variable, entrepreneurial self-efficacy as the mediating variable, and family support as the moderating variable. The empirical test results of 334 samples show that: (1) the surface similarity of entrepreneurial colleagues has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial intention of the remaining employees; (2) the entrepreneurial self-efficacy plays a mediating role between the surface similarity of entrepreneurial colleagues and the entrepreneurial intention of remaining employees; (3) family support moderates the influence of the surface similarity of entrepreneurial colleagues on the entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and the mediating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on the relationship between the surface similarity and entrepreneurial intention. This study verifies the “contagion” effect of employee entrepreneurship among colleagues, reveals the path and boundary conditions of the entrepreneurial colleagues’ surface similarity acting on the entrepreneurial intention of remaining employees, and provides a reference for enterprises to strengthen the management of employee entrepreneurship.

Key words: employee entrepreneurship, surface similarity, entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, social comparison