Entrepreneurial Orientation And Firm Performance

In recent years,the upsurge of innovation and entrepreneurial behavior has gradually become a new engine for stimulating economic growth,which has a profound impact on China's transformation of economic development mode and deepening economic system reform.Therefore,the development of entrepreneurial SMEs has also received more and more attention and encouragement from all levels of government in China.In the early stage of their own development,those SMEs themselves also implemented strategies such as entrepreneurship orientation and invested plenty of funds and resources.However,enterprises that can successfully prevent market risks and grow stronger are rare,the common problem of high investment and low survival in start-ups have plagued managers and become a major problem that restricts their further development.Hence,research on how to promote the effective transformation,sustainable development and performance improvement of entrepreneurial SMEs has certain practical needs and significance.The relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and corporate performance is an important direction for scholars in the field of entrepreneurship.The relationship between two factors has gone through the initial discussion of their simple two-way relationship,and then the boundary conditions between their relationships are examined,and later the transmission mechanism and the intermediate influence path between two factors are explored in recent years.Although lots of researches have been obtained,the research on intermediary mechanisms is still scarce.Strategic flexibility capability,as an important resource exploration,transformation and utilization capability within the organization,cannot be ignored in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance,and those theories such as resource-based view focused more on the static effect between two factors.Facing the extremely complex and ever-changing market environment,to explore the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance in dynamic environment is increasingly highlighted,while there is relatively rare research on this research area.Therefore,the exploration of these aspects has a good theoretical value and certain guiding significance for the development of entrepreneurial SMEs.Based on the theory of strategic entrepreneurship and the resource-based view,this paper focuses on the mediating mechanism of strategic flexibility between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance under the framework of dynamic capability theory,and unfolds the mediator of strategic flexibility into two dimension(resource flexibility and capability flexibility)to investigate their differences,thus a relatively complete analytical model is constructed.Then,using 386 samples of entrepreneurial SMEs in the Yangtze River Delta region for empirical analysis,and the hypotheses were tested by turns based on the methods of hierarchical regression,Bootstrapping and AMOS structural equations.The results obtained show that both entrepreneurial orientation and strategic flexibility exert positive effects on promoting firm performance;both resource flexibility and capability flexibility play a partial mediating role in the EO-FP relationship,the mediating effect between two dimensions shows differentiation,the mediating role of capability flexibility is far greater than resource flexibility.Finally,based on the empirical conclusions,we propose following policy recommendations for the development of entrepreneurial SMEs.Those enterprises need to pay more attention to the important role of entrepreneurial orientation strategy and actively cultivate and fulfill it,and continuously strengthens their organizational strategic flexibility especially for capability flexibility in the adjustment and reform process of promoting their own organic and flexible organizational structures,thereby bringing good and effective transformation of corporate resources and their healthy growth and development.Under the introduction of dynamic capability theory,this paper makes a deeper dimensional investigation and theoretical explanation of the intermediation transmission mechanism of strategic flexibility between entrepreneurial orientation and enterprise performance,the findings here improve the related research on the intermediate interaction path between two factors.and make some supplement and improvement on the antecedent factors of strategic flexibility,and the application scope of the dynamic capability theory has been expanded as well.However,still some research deficiencies exist in the paper.Lacking deep and long-term investigations between three variables in time sequencers;there are limitations in the selection of regions of enterprises;lack of further consideration of dimensions of main-effect variables and external influences,future research can complement and improve them.