Study On The Mechanism Of External Networks And Entrepreneurial Orientation On Innovation Performance

Nowadays,with the speedup of economic globalization,the rapid development of science and technology,and the rising of environmental dynamism,"entrepreneurship" and "innovation" have been regarded as the engine to stimulate vitality of enterprises,promote economic growth,and the unanimously choice toward prosperity.In order to discover and develop market opportunities earlier than competitors,access and maintain competitive advantage,accelerate growth and development,more and more companies continuously carry out product and technology innovation.Entrepreneurial orientation refers to the processes,practices,and decision-making activities that lead to new entry activities.It has been widely argued that entrepreneurial orientation helps enterprises create competitive advantage and achieve corporate visions.Entrepreneurial orientation has become a strong driving force for economic development,and been gotten more and more attention from research and practice.Entrepreneurship and innovation behaviors of enterprises are not only the results of strategic choice within the organization,but also affected by numerous external factors.On one hand,the willingness and behavior of business entrepreneurship are affected by its own resources,and capacities that are embedded in a variety of external networks.Such kinds of resources and capacities are difficult to imitate by competitors.On the other hand,the dynamic changes of the external environment have become the basic characteristics of business environment.The continuous changing of market demand and technology provide opportunities for enterprises' innovation activities.From the perspective of business management practice needs,it is necessary to strengthen the understanding of 1)the relationship between corporate networks and entrepreneurial orientation,and 2)the relationship among entrepreneurial orientation,environmental dynamism and innovation,which have practical significance for enhancing entrepreneurship and innovation management capabilities,thereby strengthening corporate core competitive advantage.From the perspective of theoretical research needs,1)there are rare research focus on the antecedents of entrepreneurial,and 2)less research reveal the mechanism of entrepreneurial orientation and innovation,which provide opportunity to carry out this study.There are lacks of researches that focus on now enterprises' external networks affects entrepreneurial orientation,as well as how entrepreneurial orientation affects innovation performance.The current research based on developed economics is not adaptable for emerging economic.In the same time,the most existing research analysis environmental dynamism as one demission,however,market demand,intensity of competitions,and technological changes have different effects on corporate behaviors.We conducted this study by following the logic of "corporate networks,entrepreneurial orientation,and innovation performance".We constructed theoretical model from corporate level,deeply reveal the mechanism.Firstly,we analyzed how strength of different types of external network ties affects entrepreneurial orientation.Next,we analyzed the mechanism of how entrepreneurial orientation promotes innovation performance.Finally,we explored the moderating effect of environmental dynamism.Focusing above three research questions,we conducted descriptive analysis,reliability and validity analysis,multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity analysis,hierarchical regression analysis,and so on.The main conclusions are as following:1.When networks strength is taken into consideration,different types of external network ties have different effect on entrepreneurial orientation.a).Close ties with customers,research institutions and government institution have significant positive influence on innovativeness.However,ties with competitors,suppliers and service intermediate institutions have no significant influence on innovativeness.b).Close ties with competitors,government institutions and service intermediate institutions promote risk taking.However,ties with customers,suppliers and research institutions do not have significant influence on risk taking.c).Close ties with customers,competitors and service intermediate institutions have positive effect on proactiveness,ties with suppliers have negative effect on proactiveness.However ties research institutions and government institutions do not contribute to proactiveness.2.The higher entrepreneurial orientation,the higher innovation performance.Except risk taking does not affect process innovation performance significantly,the remaining aspects of entrepreneurial orientation play significant roles in promoting product and process innovation performance.3.Environmental dynamism has moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance.a).Market dynamism and competitive intensity have positive moderating effect on the relationship between innovativeness and product innovation performance.b).Market dynamism and competitive intensity have positive moderating effect on the relationship between proactiveness and process innovation performance.c).Environmental dynamism does not affect the relationship between risk taking and innovation performance.This article contributes to theory in the following three aspects:1)We focus and highlight the antecedent factors,and reveal the relationships among different types of corporate external networks and entrepreneurial orientation.We make up for the lack of existing research results,which are lack of the pre-influencing factors of entrepreneurial orientation.2)We deeply study the direct influence of entrepreneurial orientation on innovation performance,from the perspective of product innovation performance and process innovation performance.We enrich “entrepreneurial orientation – performance” research.3)We systemly analyze the moderating mechanism of external environmental dynamism.From the perspective of market dynamism,competition intensity,and technological dynamism,we reveal different moderating effect of "entrepreneurial orientation-performance".We expand the theoretical framework of innovation performance studies.