Research On The Relationship Among Network Relationship, Legitimacy And Entrepreneurial Orientation Of Small And Medium-sized High-Tech Firms

High-tech firms play a crucial role in China's economic transformation and upgrading.Among them,a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are the most active subjects in the development of China's strategic emerging industries.The innovation and survival of small and medium-sized high-tech firms are highly related to the degree of local economic activity,which have been given close attention by all levels of government all over the country.Due to the double effects of the lack of internal resources and the uncertainty of external environment,small and medium-sized high-tech firms are facing a prominent disadvantage of newness and liability.Access to resources through external networks to support their innovation and entrepreneurial activities is crucial to the survival and development of them.Previous studies have shown that entrepreneurial orientation can significantly promote the innovation and entrepreneurship activities of enterprises,as well as as well as their survival and development.However,these literatures mainly focus on the influence of entrepreneurship orientation on enterprise performance,while ignore the research on the factors influencing entrepreneurship orientation.Based on the relevant research of entrepreneurial opportunity identification,this paper takes the network relationship as the prepositive influencing factor of entrepreneurship orientation,and divides it into political relationship and market relationship.To evaluate the influence of the two kinds of network relationships on the entrepreneurial orientation of enterprises,and to explore the mechanism of the influence of the “Liability of Newness” between the network relationship and the entrepreneurial orientation by taking the legitimacy as the intermediary.This study provides empirical research support for small and medium-sized high-tech firms on how to obtain resources through constructing differentiated network relationships,break the restriction of legitimacy and improve their entrepreneurship orientation.It is of great practical significance to the innovation and development of them.Based on literature research,this paper proposes a theoretical framework and basic assumptions.We designed the questionnaire by referring to the maturity measure scale of entrepreneurship orientation,network relationship and legitimacy.Through online and offline questionnaire surveys,we collected data and finally selected 265 small and medium-sized high-tech firms in Sichuan and Chongqing for data analysis.The specific analysis is divided into two steps: the reliability and validity of the tool are tested by internal consistency test and factor analysis,and then the research hypothesis is verified by the methods of hierarchical regression and Bootstrap.The results show that among the two network relationships,the market relationship plays a greater role in promoting entrepreneurship orientation.The interaction between the two network relationships also has a significant impact on entrepreneurship orientation.It is worth noting that when the market relations of enterprises reach a certain level,the promotion effect of political relations on entrepreneurial orientation will begin to work.The research shows that network relationship is an important way to improve the orientation of entrepreneurship for small and medium-sized high-tech firms,among which the market relationship plays a more remarkable role.Legitimacy is an important mediating variable between the network relationship and entrepreneurship orientation of small and medium-sized technology-based enterprises.In the last part of the study,the corresponding management suggestions are put forward,based on the conclusions above.