On the morning of June 30, 2025, CUFE Business School successfully held the 20th Session of 2025 Excellent Academic Forum in Conference Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building at the Xueyuan South Road Campus. Dr. Chen Xi, Assistant Professor of the University of Guelph, was invited as the keynote speaker. Teachers, doctoral students, master’s students of CUFE Business School, and scholars from other universities participated in this academic event.
The lecture was hosted by Associate Professor Lin Lin of CUFE Business School. Before the event, Associate Professor Lin Lin introduced Dr. Chen Xi’s academic background to the participants. Dr. Chen Xi graduated from the Stern School of Business at New York University with a PhD in Management. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, and will soon join the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on how entrepreneurs and employees build and adapt to changes, with a particular emphasis on the role of identity and self-perception in this process. Her research findings have been published in well-known academic journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Research, and Management and Organization Review.
The theme of Dr. Chen Xi’s lecture was "How to Turn Crises into Opportunities? The Role of Entrepreneurs’ Overconfidence". Focusing on the profound uncertainty brought about by crises (such as pandemics or wars), she explored whether uncertainty exerts a positive impact on entrepreneurial intentions by triggering entrepreneurs’ overconfidence. The lecture analyzed how uncertainty during crises leads to cognitive dissonance among entrepreneurs, thereby enhancing their confidence in their own knowledge and further forming overconfidence. Through an experiment involving 106 entrepreneurs in the Greater China region during the COVID-19 pandemic and a survey of 224 entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, the study found that uncertainty intensifies overconfidence, and overconfidence is further associated with entrepreneurs’ intentions to continue operating their existing businesses or enter new business areas. In addition, a difference-in-differences analysis of 40,320 business entry behaviors of 1,671 new ventures before and after the pandemic showed that these ventures were more inclined to enter unrelated business fields after the pandemic. Dr. Chen’s research provides important insights for understanding the situational antecedents of overconfidence and its role in responding to crisis-related uncertainty.
After the lecture, teachers and students present conducted lively discussions around the lecture theme, covering topics such as the formation mechanism of overconfidence, entrepreneurs’ decision-making behaviors during crises, the design of research methods, and the future trends of entrepreneurial management. This promoted in-depth exchange and collision of academic ideas.
As an important platform for CUFE Business School to fulfill its mission of "contributing new management knowledge", the "Excellent Academic Forum" is committed to focusing on cutting-edge issues in the field of business administration and Chinese enterprise management practice, gathering global wisdom and innovative perspectives, and providing theoretical support and practical paths for promoting the sustainable development of Chinese society and economy.
