The moderating effect of environmental dynamism on entrepreneurship and open innovation

Abstract

Background: The effect of entrepreneurship on open innovation under challenging environmental dynamics remains an unresolved issue critical for global economic progress, as the environmental dynamics alter businesses’ capacity for entrepreneurship.

Aim: This study aims to examine how entrepreneurship influences open innovation in Chinese companies by investigating the moderating role of environmental dynamism.

Setting: A survey questionnaire collected data from 329 middle and senior managers in Shandong, Shanghai, Beijing and other provinces.

Method: This study used hierarchical regression analysis as the data analysis method to test the causal relationships and mediating and moderating effects of each hypothesis.

Results: It was found that entrepreneurship has a significant positive impact on open innovation in firms. Specifically, entrepreneurial risk-taking and anticipation positively affected open innovation behaviour and strategic orientation of innovation. Moreover, environmental dynamism moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial mechanisms and open innovation.

Conclusion: The findings provided new insights into how environmental dynamism shapes the emergence of innovative companies in China. The study suggests entrepreneurs should adjust efforts to promote open innovation behaviour according to the degree of dynamism.

Contribution: The study expands and improves the development of the resource-based view and the capability-based view from a theoretical perspective. Furthermore, it broadens the theoretical lens by examining how the strategic orientation of innovation towards entrepreneurship supports open innovation practices to improve the operational performance of organisations. Finally, this research empirically examined the moderating impact of environmental dynamism on the relationship between entrepreneurial strategic orientation and open innovation-based environmental dynamism on company performance.