Research On The Effect Of Institutional Environments On International Entrepreneurial Activities Based On Coleman’s "Bathtub" Framework

Faced with the highly globalized market and the dynamic pattern of currently global competition,new ventures involving the international entrepreneurship have become one of the most important strategies.Being actively in international entrepreneurship not only provides competitive advantages for new ventures,but also improves the economic stability and international competitiveness of their industries.Considering its important role in economic growth and transformation,international entrepreneurship has attracted extensive attention from both policy makers and scholars.In addition to policies adopted by governments to support new ventures to involve in international entrepreneurship,international entrepreneurship research has become an increasingly important research field.In the past two decades,international entrepreneurship research has devoted to finding out factors that drive new ventures to choose early internationalization from their inception.However,the literature mainly focuses on explaining international entrepreneurship from the micro-level of firms or individuals,leading to the unexplained phenomenon that the proportion of new ventures involving in international entrepreneurship is different across countries.Therefore,when explaining this phenomenon,more attention should be paid to macro-level institutional factors.As documented by the literature in comparative entrepreneurship internationalization research stream,institutional environments play the critical role in the international entrepreneurship.However,there is still a lack of comprehensive theoretical model and empirical analysis on how institutional environments play a role.This neglect may make it difficult to fully explain why international entrepreneurship vary greatly different across countries.Due to the complexity of international entrepreneurial activities,studying the interaction of multi-level factors can help fully explain the differences of international entrepreneurial activities at the national level,and then promote international entrepreneurial research.To address these gaps,based on Coleman’s "Bathtub" framework,which is generally accepted to study the interaction between macro and micro levels,this research proposes the framework of "macro institutional antecedents-micro social networks-micro actions-macro results".Using this framework,this research analyzes whether and how the institutional environments affect international entrepreneurship,aiming to help policy makers to gain better understanding of how to guide new ventures to involve in international entrepreneurship.First,the concepts of key variables are defined.Through the review on the international entrepreneurship,institutional environments and social networks,this research defines the concepts and dimensions of these variables;The theories used to analyze the relationship between key variables are determined by elaborating the theories and analyzing the relationship between them;Based on Coleman’s "bathtub" framework,this research proposes the analysis framework of "macro institutional antecedents-micro social networks-micro actions-macro results",and then analyzes the logic of whole paper.Second,the relationship between institutional environments and international entrepreneurship from the macro-level has been analyzed in the first study,aiming to reveal whether institutional environments affect international entrepreneurship at the national level.This section discussed how the four key institutional environment dimensions(performance-based culture,social supportive culture,entrepreneurial social value and governance quality)affect international entrepreneurship at the national level.Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor,Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness,and World Bank World Governance Index to obtain data at the national level for the empirical analysis,this section revealed the institutional antecedents that explain the differences in international entrepreneurship across countries.Third,the relationship between the macro-level institutional environments and the micro-level social networks has been analyzed in the second study,aiming to form a macromicro level path to explain the macro-level relationship in the first study.This section discussed how the different institutional environment dimensions(performance-based culture,social supportive culture,entrepreneurial social value and governance quality)shape the formal and informal social networks of new ventures;Data from different institutional environments countries was used to conduct empirical analysis,providing the results to shed light on how institutional environments shape the social networks at micro-level.Fourth,the relationship between social networks and international entrepreneurship of new ventures at the micro-level has been analyzed in the third study,aiming to form a micro-level path to explain the macro-level relationship in the first study.This section firstly proposed the hypothesis of the impact of formal and informal social networks on the international entrepreneurship of new ventures.Then,the moderating roles of institutional development(Availability of financial capital,Entrepreneurship education quality,General trust and Egalitarianism)were further investigated;The method of multi-level logistic regression was used to test proposed hypotheses.The results revealed the role of social networks in the international entrepreneurship of new ventures and how the institutional development affects the international entrepreneurship through replacing,supplementing and unlocking the resources within social networks.Fifth,a multi-level integration study was performed to analyze the relationships among institutional environments,social networks and international entrepreneurship of new ventures.This section was aimed to form the overall path to explain the macro-level relationship in the first study.On the basis of the above studies,the relationships among the institutional environments,social networks and international entrepreneurship were systematically analyzed,thereby providing further proof for the overall theoretical model.This section revealed how the macro-level institutional environments affect the international entrepreneurship of new ventures through shaping the micro-level social networks.By virtue of aggregating the international entrepreneurship of new ventures at the micro-level to the national level,the differences of international entrepreneurship at the national level were finally explained.Finally,the countermeasures to promote international entrepreneurship were put forward from macro-level,micro-level and macro-micro level separately.