Political Connection,Entrepreneurship And Innovation Performance

China's economy has stepped into a "new normal" phase,which makes widespread entrepreneurship and innovation become one of the "twin engines" to drive economic development.As a major force to promote technological progress and economic growth,high-tech enterprises have become a key factor in adjusting industrial structure and enhancing national core competitiveness.Studies show that most companies in transition economies are passionate about establishing political relationships to obtain more resources in response to uncertainties in the transition process.Therefore,this paper explores the impact of political connections on innovation performance,and the intermediary role that entrepreneurship plays in the process.After a comprehensive review of the relevant literature and theories,this paper constructs a theoretical framework of "political connection-entrepreneurship-innovation performance" and reveals the influence mechanism of them.In the empirical part,this paper selects SME and GEM Listed Companies that are certified as high-tech enterprises by national Torch Program projects in 2012-2016 for empirical test.The main conclusions are as follows.First,the representative political tie has a positive impact on the innovation performance of high-tech companies,while the role of government political relationship is not significant.Second,entrepreneurship mediates the effect of the relationship between representative political connection and innovation performance,that is the higher the level of the relationship is,the stronger entrepreneurship the chairman have,and the better the innovation performance will be.Third,two institutional environmental factors can moderate the meditative effect of entrepreneurship,which means under the market where government intervention is less and the factor market is more developed,entrepreneurship is expected to release a stronger mediating effect on the relationship between representative political tie and innovation performance.This paper presents several innovations.For one thing,The topic has certain novelty by introducing entrepreneurship as a mediator into the research framework.And the research focuses on two different mechanisms of "political connection-entrepreneurship-innovation performance”,under the consideration of the moderating effect of institutional environment,which supplements the blank of study in related fields to a certain extent.For another,this paper takes investment concentration as a surrogate index of entrepreneurship,providing a new idea for the future research of entrepreneurship at the micro level.Furthermore,the research conclusions of this paper have certain enlightening significance for high-tech enterprises to rationally formulate political strategies.At the same time,they also provide policy recommendations for the government to vigorously support enterprise technological innovation and promote entrepreneurship.