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A research on the influence of organizational flexibility on the growth of high-tech SMEs

Zhao Zhongwei, Li Rui, Zhu Bingjie   

  1. School of Economics & Management, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang, China
  • Online:2019-07-20 Published:2019-07-22

Abstract: With the development of science and technology, the products update faster and faster and the customer demands are changing faster,so the high-tech SMEs are facing with the environment full of fierce competition. The SMEs play an important role in the national economy and it is an important part of national economy. The SMEs have the characteristics of short average survival time, small scale, weak anti-risk ability and weak growth. The high-tech enterprise has the characteristics of knowledge, technology, talent intensive, high investment and high risk. The high-tech SMEs have both the characteristics of SMEs and high-tech enterprises. Small and mid-sized high-tech companies have become the main part of technical innovations of our country, and therefore, in the dynamic environment, research on the growth of high-tech SMEs has a profound practical significance.
Organizational flexibility is defined as an ability to respond to environmental changes, to integrate internal and external resources, to seize market opportunities, to adjust organizational strategies, and to make adjustments in time with the environment changes. Combined with the characteristics of high-tech SMEs, this paper divides organization flexibility into four dimensions which are flexible structure, flexible resources, flexible capacity and flexible culture base on the researches of other scholars. The enterprise growth is divided into scale expansion and quality optimization. High-tech SMEs are easily affected by the dynamic environment, so the environment dynamics is used as the adjustment variable measured from three angles as technology, market and government policy so that we can study the regulatory role between organizational flexibility and enterprise growth.
On the basis of theoretical research, this paper establishes the theory model with 16 hypotheses for organization flexibility impact on high-tech SMEs growth, and puts forward the 14 variable measurement indexes for organization flexibility and 6 indexes for high-tech SMEs growth to develop a questionnaire. This paper analyzes the data obtained from 297 questionnaires returned of 400 questionnaires, and checks the reliability and validity of the survey data and take multivariate regression analysis to testify the moderating effects.
The structural equation model is used to test the growth of high-tech SMEs with organizational flexibility impact. The research results of the structural equation show that resource flexibility, capability flexibility, and cultural flexibility have a positive impact both on quality optimization and scale expansion of the high-tech SMEs. The structural flexibility has no positive effect on the scale expansion, but still has a positive effect on the quality optimization of the high-tech SMEs. According to the test results, the impact degree of the four flexibilities is in the following turn: capability flexibility, resource flexibility, culture flexibility and structural flexibility.
The environmental dynamics plays a positive regulatory role in the process of structure, capacity and culture flexibility impacting on quality optimization. The environmental dynamics also plays a positive regulatory role in the process of capacity and culture flexibility impacting on scale expansion.
On the basis of empirical research, this paper puts forward the strategies to promote the growth of high-tech SMEs from the four dimensions as improving capability flexibility, resource flexibility, culture flexibility and establishing a flat organizational structure.

Key words: high-tech SMEs, organizational flexibility, enterprise growth, environmental dynamics