Slack resources and entrepreneurial orientation: The moderating effects of institutional environment

Abstract

Abstract: In the context of innovation-driven development, endogenous resource is an important source to determine both the strategic behavior and sustainable competitive advantages of enterprises, especially for the "small and weak" new ventures with external resource constraints. Therefore, the driven force of innovative development must go back to the internal of enterprises, which not only need to pay much attention to the utilization of slack resources, but also strengthen the cultivation of entrepreneurial orientation. Different from the present studies of most literatures on the post-variables such as entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance, this paper, based on the combination of resource-based view and entrepreneurial opportunity view, explores the important pre-variables of entrepreneurial orientation-slack resources. Since the appearance of resource constraint of new ventures often conceals the fact that they do have slack resources, few studies have paid attention to the function of slack of new ventures. In fact, new ventures need more slack resources to ensure the continuity of their core business. Therefore, this paper takes the new ventures as the research object, analyzes the function value of slack resources in the enterprise more dialectically, and clarifies the non-linear effect and formation mechanism of slack resources on entrepreneurship orientation. The rational development and optimized allocation of slack resources will help to relieve the external resource constraints faced by the enterprise and help to understand the integration concept of "resource-strategy".
In addition, the current economic transformation development in China presents a diversified trend of "from planned economy to market economy, from monopoly to competition, from traditional industries to emerging industries". Therefore, another key to deepening the research on entrepreneurial orientation is to introduce relevant external situational factors to analyze the moderating effect. Enterprises do not exist in a vacuum. Institutional economics emphasizes that innovation is a process of interaction between external institutional environment and internal organization activities. As the game rules of the society, the regimes can regulate the resources allocation within the organization and the communication activities between the organizations for regimes directly determine the implementation of enterprise strategy. Therefore, due to a firm′s internal activities inevitably affected by external regimes, we respectively analysis the moderating effects of informal institution and formal institution environment on the relationship between slack resources and entrepreneurial orientation from two dimensions by social network and intellectual property protection, to deepen the understanding of different effects of internal "resource-strategy" transformation process. While giving full play to the positive guiding role of formal regime, we should also rely on the key guiding role of informal regime in resource allocation and give play to the role of market mechanism. Through the joint action of two different mechanisms, it can not only restrain the possible "policy regulation failure", but also effectively correct the potential "market regulation failure", which is of practical significance for guiding the innovation and development of new ventures.
On this basis, we take 252 GEM listed companies from 2011 to 2016 as samples, using the multiple regression model to empirically examine the relationship between slack resources and entrepreneurial orientation, and analyzes the moderating effect of social network and intellectual property protection. The results show that both unabsorbed slack and absorbed slack resources have the inverted U-shaped impact on entrepreneurial orientation. In addition, taking social network as the informal institution, and intellectual property protection as the formal institution moderating factor respectively, differential effects on slack resources and entrepreneurial orientation are tested. There are three main conclusions are drawn: (1) Slack resources accumulated by the new ventures are the key to innovation and development, however, as slack resources are accumulated beyond the threshold, enterprises will gradually show path-dependent entrepreneurial inertia, leading to inefficient or even inefficient entrepreneurial oriented behavior stagnation. (2) As an informal institution, social network strengthens the positive relationship between unabsorbed slack and entrepreneurial orientation, and also strengthens the negative relationship between them. While the positive relationship between absorbed slack and entrepreneurial orientation is strengthened, the negative relationship between them is weakened. It can be seen that new ventures embedded in social network cannot ignore the differentiation effect of network relationship on "resource-strategy", and enterprises must base on their own internal resource endowment when making innovative strategies with the help of social network. (3) The intellectual property protection, as an important formal institution, weakens the inverted u-shaped relationship between unabsorbed slack and entrepreneurial orientation, and intensifies the inverted u-shaped relationship between absorbed slack and entrepreneurial orientation. It can be seen that the intellectual property protection has different positive and negative external effects on the transformation process from internal resources precipitated in different forms to entrepreneurial behaviors. While giving full play to the "incentive effect" produced by the formal institution, enterprises must be careful of the possible "crowding out effect". To sum up, this paper proposes an integrated framework for the dynamic path of strategic management of new ventures, it not only provides a new viewpoint for the integration of enterprise strategic management theory and institutional economics, but also guiding directions for expanding the theory of organizational strategic management.

Key words: unabsorbed slack, absorbed slack, entrepreneurial orientation, social network, intellectual property protection

Wang Yu, Hu Haiqing. Slack resources and entrepreneurial orientation: The moderating effects of institutional environment[J]. Science Research Management, 2021, 42(8): 35-42.

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