Research On Entrepreneurial Orientation Of Firms In Clusters And Its Relationship With Performance: A Network Perspective

The past two decades has witnessed high rates of change in the market environment. For sustained competitive advantage, firms must be more creative, risk-taking and proactive than their competitors to implement corporate entrepreneurship activities successfully. Since 1980s, scholars have conducted numerous researches about the antecedents and consequences of corporate entrepreneurship with three key issues:what is the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) characteristics with innovativeness, risk-taking, proactiveness on firm performance? What contingency factors will affect the relationship between EO and performance? How to motivate firms'EO? However, nowadays researches focus on the atom's firm, and neglect the increasingly important role of inter-firm environment. As a special kind of enterprise networks, enterprises clusters have significant implications on firm's EO and it's relationship with performance. However, restricted within organizational internal perspective, traditional researches could not give convincing explanations on the driving forces of EO, nor reveal the internal mechanism through which EO affects the performance of firms-in-clusters.In view of networks, this study tries to explain the driving factors of EO in enterprises clusters environment, and attempts to find out the contingency factors on the relationship between EO and performance. From "resource gap" which the corporate entrepreneurship leads to, this study compares three main methods of obtaining resources, and argues the two special ways of getting strategic resource of firms-in-clusters:sharing the special strategic resources in enterprises clusters level—cluster resources; getting strategic resource through networks which depends on structural embededness. Based on the above theoretical analysis, we construct a conceptual model of EO and enterprises performance in enterprises clusters, and develop hypothesis in the following four aspects:(1) the comparison of EO between firms-in-clusters and firms-outside-clusters; (2) the impact of cluster resources on the elements of EO of firms-in-clusters; (3) the relationship between EO and performance of firms-in-clusters; (4) the contingency effect of structural embeddedness on the relationship between EO and performance of firms-in-clusters.In the part of empirical research, based on 167 valid survey questionnaires from firms-in-clusters and 96 valid survey questionnaires from firms-outside-clusters in Zhejiang Province, we mainly use one-way analysis of variances (ANOVA), hierarchical multiple regression (HRA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to verify the conceptual model and get some important results and conclusions:(1) The EO of firms-in-clusters is significantly higher than that of firms-outside-clusters. Specifically, innovation dimension and risk-taking dimension of EO of firms-in-clusters are significantly higher than those of firms-outside-clusters. There is no significant difference of proactiveness dimension between firms-in-clusters and firms-outside-clusters.(2) Cluster resources are the underlying reasons for explaining the higher EO of firms-in-clusters. In the four elements of cluster resources, the tacit knowledge can explains the most of higher EO of firms-in-clusters, and it has significant and positive effects on all the three dimensions of EO; high trust among the firms-in-clusters has significant and positive effects on creative dimension and risk-taking dimension, but it has no significant effect on proactiveness dimension; high-intensity atmosphere of competitions and co-operations in clusters only has significant and positive effect on creative dimension, but has no significant effects on the other two dimensions of EO; the supports of relevant institutions in clusters has significant and positive effects on risk-taking dimension and proactiveness dimension, but it has no significant effect on creative dimension.(3) The three dimensions of EO of firms-in-clusters are all has significant and positive effects on performance. This result proves the necessity of EO, namely the implementation of EO is an important way to obtain sustained competitive advantage for firms-in-clusters.(4) Structural embeddedness has significant and positive contingency effect on the relationship between EO and enterprises performance of firms-in-clusters. Therefore, if firms-in-clusters can make improvements in network scale, network openness, network centrality and structural hole, the positive effect of EO on firm performance will enhanced.Around the antecedents and consequences of EO of firms-in-clusters, the paper tries to make research progress in the following three aspects:(1) the paper compares the EO of firms-in-clusters and firms-out-clusters empirically, and concludes the EO's characteristics of firms-in-clusters; (2) based on the relationship between cluster resources and EO, the paper concludes that firms-in-clusters have higher EO for they have unique clusters resources. Thus our study provides a viable path to cultivate EO of firms-in-clusters; (3) the paper tests the relationship between EO of firms-in-clusters and performance, and breakthrough the limitations of extant study on corporate entrepreneurship which only focus on firms'internal factors. The paper also verifies the contingency effects of structural embededness and thus provides a new idea for the effective implementation of EO for firms-in-clusters.This study contributes to corporate entrepreneurship theory and resource based theory, deepens their applications for firms-in-clusters, and makes the practical implications on how to effectively cultivate and implement EO of firms-in-clusters. However, constrained by the researcher's own academic ability, the current study still has many shortcomings. In the end, the author presents the limitations and reveals several issues for further exploration.