The Impact Of Network Characteristic On New Firm Performance In The Context Of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Entrepreneurial ecosystem is an important strategy to improve the level of regional entrepreneurial activities and promote the rapid economic development.It can bring rich entrepreneurial opportunities and resources,promote the network establishment among multiple actors,and provide supportive entrepreneurial environment for the survival and development of new ventures.Recently It has become a common concern of academia and industry that how the entrepreneurial ecosystem can promote the new firm survival and growth.Entrepreneurial ecosystem is a complex network composed of enterprises,government,investment institutions,universities,scientific research institutions and intermediaries.They embedded in the network are interrelated and interdependent.New enterprises can solve the resource bottleneck problems and lack of legitimacy with the help of the network between the actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,thus developing entrepreneurial opportunities successfully to improve entrepreneurial output.Obviously,the network relationship under the entrepreneurial ecosystem is crucial to the new firm performance.Based on the realistic and theoretical background,the paper puts forward four research questions:(1)What are the characteristics of new venture networks in the entrepreneurial ecosystem?(2)How can new ventures use network characteristics to improve performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem?(3)How can they promote their performance through network bricolage in the entrepreneurial ecosystem?(4)What role does different types of absorptive capacity play in the relationship between network bricolage and new firm performance?In order to answer the above research questions,this study refines the network characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and constructs the relationship model of network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in order to reveal the impact mechanism of network characteristics on new firm performance in the context of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.Specifically,we summarize and deduce the network characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by systematically organizing relevant theories and existing researches,and construct the preset model of "network characteristics-behavior-capability-new firm performance".Then we conduct the exploratory multi-case analysis by selecting 4 new ventures in Zhongguancun Park and Shenzhen Bay Plaza to explore the core construct dimension further,i.e.the network characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem mainly include relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change.Network bricolage can be divided into resource bricolage by using existing networks,combining the existing networks,and using the networks at hand to create new networks according to different network processing degrees.Therefore,based on the social network theory,social identity theory and knowledge-based view,as well as relevant researches on entrepreneurial ecosystem and its network,resource bricolage and absorptive capacity,the theoretical model of network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is constructed.Then,according to the relationships between variables in the theoretical model,this paper discusses and proposes relevant research hypotheses.Through sending questionnaires on a large scale to start-ups in Zhongguancun Park and Shenzhen Bay Plaza,326 valid questionnaires of 163 new enterprises are finally collected.The statistical analysis software SPSS 24.0 is used to carry out factor analysis,correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis on the collected data,and the hypothesis test results show that 14 hypotheses pass the empirical test and 3 hypotheses fail.According to this,this paper advances the research conclusions.Based on theoretical analysis,qualitative and quantitative research,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)The network characteristics of new firms in the entrepreneurial ecosystem involve heterogeneity,multiplicity and change;(2)Relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change have positive effects on new firm performance;(3)Relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change have positive effects on network bricolage;(4)Network bricolage has a positive impact on new firm performance;(5)Network bricolage plays an mediating role in the relationships between relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity,relational change and new firm performance.(6)Network bricolage positively affects the potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity;(7)Both potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity have a positive impact on new firm performance;(8)Potential absorptive capacity mediates the relationship between network bricolage and new firm performance.To sum up,this study proposes the network characteristics of new ventures in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,reveals the impact mechanism of network characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem on the new firm performance,and reveals that the network characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem act on the network bricolage,thus affecting the new firm performance,and the potential absorptive capacity is the key path to transform the network bricolage into the new firm performance.The research has certain innovations and theoretical contributions.(1)According to the research gap of social network theory and entrepreneurial ecosystem network,this paper puts forward the network characteristics of new enterprises in entrepreneurial ecosystem and develops its scale,which is helpful to expand the context boundary of social network theory.Starting from the perspective of network,this paper takes the new firms in the entrepreneurial ecosystem as the research object,and adopts the methods of theoretical analysis and exploratory multi-case study to summarize and refine the network characteristics of the new firms in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and develop its measurement scale.This paper proposes that the network characteristics of new enterprises in the entrepreneurial ecosystem mainly include relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change.According to this,combined with the existing researches on relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change,the measurement scale of network characteristics of entrepreneurial ecosystem is developed and applied to the empirical research in this paper,which is helpful to make up the explanation gap of social network theory on the new enterprise network characteristics in the context of entrepreneurial ecosystem and expand the context boundary of social network theory.(2)Based on the relevant researches on resource bricolage,this paper proposes the dimensions of network bricolage,which is helpful to open the core of network bricolage behavior.Based on the theoretical gap of network bricolage,this study systematically sorts out the research literature of resource bricolage,summarizes the definition,core elements,types and related research of resource bricolage,and provides theoretical basis for exploring the core dimensions of network bricolage.This paper sorts out and summarizes the definition of network bricolage and related researches,and discusses that network bricolage is the main way of resource bricolage for new enterprises in the entrepreneurial ecosystem based on the symbiosis of the entrepreneurial ecosystem(network structure,governance mechanism and sharing logic)and the definition of network bricolage.Through theoretical analysis and case coding analysis of 4 start-ups in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,three dimensions of network bricolage are extracted.According to different degrees of network processing,network bricolage is divided into using the existing network for resource bricolage,reorganizing the existing network for resource bricolage,and creating new network based on the existing network for resource bricolage.The core of network bricolage behavior is opened.It is found that new enterprises combine the resource endowments and different types of entrepreneurial opportunities to develop and select suitable network bricolage methods.Subsequently,this study combines the network bricolage dimensions extracted through literature review and multi-case analysis,sums up the items of resource bricolage developed by Senyard,Baker and Davidsson(2009)into the three dimensions of network bricolage,modifies and perfects the related items,and obtains the scale with qualified reliability and validity through validity check,finally forms the scale of network bricolage.The scale is applied to the empirical research in this paper to test the relationship between network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.(3)Based on the network perspective,this paper constructs the relationship model of network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to reveal the internal mechanism of new firm performance improvement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.Starting from the perspective of network,based on the social network theory,social identity theory and knowledge-based view,as well as the relevant research on the entrepreneurial ecosystem and its network,resource bricolage and absorptive capacity,it follows the classic research paradigm of "characteristics-behaviorscapabilities-results" and constructs the relationship model of network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.Specifically,the research idea of this paper is divided into two parts.First,in order to reveal the mechanism of network characteristics on new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,this paper constructs the relationship model between network characteristics,network bricolage and new firm performance in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,and discusses the relationship between network characteristics(relational heterogeneity,relational multiplicity and relational change)and new firm performance,the relationship between network bricolage and new firm performance,the relationship between network characteristics and network bricolage,and the mediating effect of network bricolage between network characteristics and new firm performance respectively.Secondly,in order to open the black box of the influence of network bricolage on the new firm performance,this paper constructs the relationship model of network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance,analyzes the relationship between absorptive capacity and new firm performance,the relationship between network bricolage and realized absorptive capacity,and the mediating role of potential absorptive capacity in the relationship between network bricolage and new firm performance.To sum up,this study builds a model of the relationship between network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance to make up for the research gaps in the existing literature on the relationship between network characteristics,network bricolage,absorptive capacity and new firm performance,and reveals the internal mechanism of new firm performance improvement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.