Research On The Effect Of New Ventures’ Embedding In Industrial Clusters On Entrepreneurial Performance From The Perspective Of Organizational Legitimacy

Industrial cluster is an economic community that interrelated enterprises and its supporting systems agglomerating in specific and related industry. For new ventures, the industrial clusters form a special entrepreneurial environment. There are plenty of entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurial resources within the industrial clusters, and the entrepreneurial activities are more active than other regions. But new ventures’survival rate is generally not high, which is the world’s common characteristics of entrepreneurial activity. Therefore, to improve new ventures’ survival and growth ability is a major and urgent practical issue of entrepreneurship research.This dissertation researched the path of new ventures embedding in industrial clusters through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial legitimacy to affect entrepreneurial performance in the specific institutional environment of China’s industrial clusters. The dissertation used the social network embeddedness theory to research this subject from the perspective of the new institutional organizational legitimacy theory. Taking the industrial cluster as the research background, the boundary of the social network is defined, and the new institutional background is established from the perspective of organizational sociology. This dissertation not only considered the theory’ generality, but also combined with the particularity of the environment of industry cluster in China. In theory, embedding in the industrial clusters is from the social network relationships or the network structure of human relations to study the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in the industrial clusters. And entrepreneurial legitimacy refers to the new venture’entrepreneurial behavior is understood or accepted by the existing institutional arrangements as well as the system of values, norms and cognition in specific entrepreneurial institutional context. According to the past research, the survival and development of new ventures was mainly related to the innovation ability. However, some new ventures have obvious technical superiority, but often fail due to some reasons that have nothing to do with efficiency or technical cause. Entrepreneurial legitimacy not only reflects the legal constraints on the new venture, but also reflects the influence of social norms, values, cognition on the new venture. In practice, the results of this dissertation confirm the path of new venture embedding in industrial cluster to affect the entrepreneurial performance. It can guide entrepreneur to depend on the entrepreneurial social network of industrial cluster to carry out entrepreneurial activities better. On the one hand, it provides practical guidance for entrepreneur to achieve success. On the other hand, it is conducive to promoting the upgrading and development of industrial clusters.The main contents of this dissertation are as follows:firstly, the dissertation researched the path of the new ventures embedding in industrial clusters through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial legitimacy to affect entrepreneurial performance. Including the mechanism of the new ventures embedding in industrial clusters to affect entrepreneurial performance, entrepreneurial legitimacy to affect entrepreneurial performance, and the new ventures embedding in industrial clusters to affect entrepreneurial legitimacy. Secondly, from the perspective of external factors and internal factors, the dissertation researched the role of external environment and organizational culture in the relationship between embedding in industrial cluster and entrepreneurial performance. In the end, the dissertation explored the strategies of entrepreneurial legitimacy to help the new ventures to achieve entrepreneurial legitimacy from the strategic perspective.The main conclusions of this research are as follows:Firstly, it is found that political relations embedding in industrial cluster, commercial relations embedding in industrial cluster, network scale and network centrality embedding in industrial cluster have a significant positive effect on entrepreneurial performance. Political relations embedding in industrial cluster help new ventures access to scarce resources, policy information, and get more cost advantages compared to the market channels. Commercial relations embedding in industrial cluster help new ventures to obtain valuable business information, technology, business opportunities. The larger the network scale that new ventures embedding in, the more abundant relational resources for new ventures. Compared with non central position, the new ventures in center position are more active and higher visibility. According to the results of the research, the hostile environment has a positive moderating effect between the relationship of industrial clusters embedding and entrepreneurial performance.In hostile environments, new ventures can give full play to the advantages of embedding in industrial clusters.Secondly, new ventures embedding in industrial cluster can enhance entrepreneurial performance through the mediating effect of entrepreneurial legitimacy. The political relations that new venture embedding in industrial cluster make it get regulative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy, the commercial relations that new venture embedding in industrial cluster make it get normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy. Network scale and network centrality reflect the characteristics of network structure that new ventures embedding in industrial cluster. The larger the network scale is and the more obvious the network centrality features, it is more conducive to the establishment of entrepreneurial legitimacy of the new ventures. Entrepreneurial regulative legitimacy, normative legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy can enhance the entrepreneurial performance.Thirdly, new ventures acquire entrepreneurial legitimacy through legitimate strategy. Legitimate strategy is the process of acquiring the legitimacy of the new venture through proactive strategic behavior. Entrepreneurs must have a clear understanding of regulation, norms, values, and cognitive factors in institutional environment and its influence to the new ventures. According to the different industrial cluster’ institutional situation, new ventures can take entrepreneurial legitimate strategy pertinently to acquire entrepreneurial legitimacy. The research put forward the legitimate strategy of entrepreneurial process and through the entrepreneurial network development, symbolic action and impression management to achieve entrepreneurial legitimacy.The research of this dissertation makes up for the past research’deficiency that neglect of the entrepreneurial activities’social embedding and the innovation value’ social impact factors. The innovation of this dissertation are mainly in the following points:firstly, from the perspective of social network embeddedness to research the entrepreneurial activities of new ventures in the industrial cluster, provides a new idea for the research of entrepreneurship, confirms the promoting effect in entrepreneurial performance of the relations and structure of new ventures embedding in industry cluster. Secondly, the dissertation derives the organization legitimacy of the new institutional theory of sociology of organization to entrepreneurial legitimacy, takes entrepreneurial legitimacy as a mediating variable in the process of new ventures embedding in industrial clusters to affect entrepreneurial performance, breaks through the previous economic research which emphasizes "efficiency mechanism". Thirdly, the dissertation proposes new venture’entrepreneurial legitimacy strategy from the perspective of strategic management, emphasizing the new ventures get social support through the strategic operation and deployment to achieve success.