| Cartoon companies and other emerging economic enterprises have become one of the important driving forces of global economic development. But due to the environment,enterprises’ s resources,cognition and other factors in China, how to achieve growth has become an issue in theory research for these enterprises. With environmental uncertainty leading to that life cycle becomes shorter and shorter for their creative(works), technology,products, services and business model,tegother with the emerging economic institutional system is not perfect, and the widespread cognitive bias that opportunities are more than the threats and other reasons, most cartoon companies take on actively or reactively an Entrepreneurial Orientation(EO), trying to turn continuously new creativities and innovative works into a better enterprise performance.But EO will consume a large amount of resources and cause the defects of legitimacy, while most cartoon companies are young SMEs and lack of resources, which easily results in a legitimacy paradox.How to solve this conflict? It’s difficult to find the answer from only a single resource view, institutional theory or cognitive theory. Moreover, how to go from EO to enterprise growth(performance)is still a debating topic in organization management theory.So the purpose of this study is to explore the growth path that takes advantage of internal resources, external resources and institutional elements in order to gain sustainable and accelerated growth for enterprises.Through interviews and analysis, I find that there are two ways to acquire resources for cartoon companies.The first way is to use the key Intellectual Capital(IC) of company.Recent research has confirmed that IC is a kind of strategic resources(such as intellectual property right, special talents, etc.) that can produce the leverage effect with “a little input maybe geting more gains relatively”.The second way is to integrate external resources with internal resources.But this process and results are greatly affected by Organizational Legitimacy(OL) on behalf of recognition and acceptance by the outside world.Therefore,this study focuses on the key relationship and main paths from EO to enterprise growth for Chinese cartoon companies, with a new perspective that integrats three classical thory paradigms including Cognitive-Behavior-Performance,Resources–Capability-Performance and Institution-Conduct-Performance(ICP), using IC as a mediator variable and OL as amoderator variable.I will explore how EO and IC affect the enterprise growth,and analyze how OL affect the relationship between EO to IC and the relationship between IC and the enterprise growth.The purpose is to discover the enterprise growth path under uncertain environments, resource constraints and legitimacy shortcomings, and to provide theoretical support for sustainable and accelerated growth for emerging economic enterprises.This research starts from the existing literature review and analysis firstly, then I propose the model and hypothesis based on the EO-IC-growth performance path with OL effect on the enterprise level. I focus especially on the positive and negative resource effects of OL, and its interaction with the model of OL and IC that explores the internal and external leverage effect of IC. This model is tested using survey data from some cartoon companies.Following the literature, this research first conducted a pilot study and then designed a formal questionnaire.The survey was then conducted on most cartoon canpanies in Beijing,Guangzhou, Xiamen, Hangzhou and other cities.The study acquired a total of 225 valid samples. Finally,the model and hypotheses were tested using reliability and validity analysis,deviation test, SEM and multiple linear regressions.The empirical results show that there is a significant difference in IC for enterprises with different asset level.There also exists a significant relationship(downward-U shape)between business life and OL.And there is a significant positive effect between employee number and OL,which also show significant difference in different locations,companies in Northern cities being the most significant. There is a significant relationship(downward-U shape)between business life and enterprise growth, which also show significant difference in different locations. Based on the controlling assets, employee number, business life and location, there has a significant partial positive effect between EO(Innovativeness and Proactiveness) and enterprise growth, but also EO has a significant full positive effect on all IC. IC consists of human capital, structural capital and relationship capital, and has a significant positive effect on enterprise growth. IC plays a partial mediation role in the relationship between EO and enterprise growth. OL has a negative regulation effect on the relationship between EO and IC, as well as a positive regulation effect on the relationship between IC and enterprise growth. Specifically, Institutional Legitimacy(IL) has a negative regulation effect on the relationship between EO and structural capital, but a positiveregulation effect on the relationship between structural capital(also relationship capital) and enterprise growth. On the other hand,Macket Legitimacy(ML) has a negative regulation effect on the relationship between EO and human capital(also structural capital).Moreover,ML has a positive regulation effect on the relationship between EO and relationship capital,as well as structural capital(also relationship capital) and enterprise growth. So EO can promote the growth of enterprises through IC, and the company should prevent the negative impact of OL in the period of enhancing IC and take advantage of the “accelerated”effect of OL in the period of using IC.This research has three main innovation aspects. First, it takes a new perspective.Past research on enterprise performance or growth theory considers(1) environment cognition and strategy selction, or(2) resources and capabilities, or(3) external relations and Organization Legitimacy, or any two of these three persepctives. In contrast, this research is based on complete logical chain of “cognitive(behavior), resource, legitimacy and performance”,including three views of CBV(Cognitive-Based View), RBV(Resources-Based View) and IBV(Institution-Based view). Second, Exploring the interaction of internal and external factors of enterprise growth..The interactive effects of OL and EO, as well as IC and OL is the most important innovative content of this research. It helps to explore the internal and external leverage effect of IC and the stage moderating effect of OL, which expands the research direction and extents of the IC and OL.Third, this research deepens Chinese management style.The study of the relationship between EO and enterprise performance(growth) originates from the West. Scholars generally believe those paths of the enterprise performance differ under different environment, different mediation effect and adjustment effect. Although many Chinese scholars have explored these paths, this study is the first to research them for Chinese cartoon companies. So the process and conclusion of the study may be certain significance or reference value for other emerging enterprises’ management research or practice. |
PDF Full Text Request