The Impact of Environmental and Organizational Configuration on Corporate Entrepreneurship:A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The Chinese government is actively promoting the high-quality development of innovation and entrepreneurship, and encouraging large and medium-sized enterprises to start businesses in order to achieve the strategic revival of enterprises. However, how to activate corporate entrepreneurship has not been effectively addressed. Taking 20 Chinese enterprises as case samples, this study adopts the qualitative comparative analysis method of fuzzy sets, uses Timmons’ entrepreneurial process model for reference, and incorporates employee engagement and entrepreneurial culture into the theoretical model of corporate entrepreneurship for the first time. Starting from the environmental and organizational levels, it reconfigures the two levels by using the method of configuration thinking and QCA. Five conditional factors are discussed, including multiple concurrent factors and complex causal mechanisms, which lead to the difference of entrepreneurial activity. The main conclusions are as follows:（1）Different from the corporate entrepreneurship of developed countries in Europe and America, Chinese enterprises have their own unique growth and competitive advantages. The opportunity recognition capability is a necessary condition for Chinese enterprises to start their own businesses. Internal entrepreneurial culture is not a necessary condition for Chinese enterprises to start their own businesses. However, the lack of internal entrepreneurial culture is a necessary condition for generating non-high corporate entrepreneurial activity.（2）The driving mechanism of high corporate entrepreneurial activity can be divided into three paths. The driving mechanism of non-high corporate entrepreneurial activity has two paths, and there is an asymmetric relationship between the driving mechanism and high corporate entrepreneurial activity, that is, the non-high corporate entrepreneurial activity cannot be directly deduced from the opposite of the causes of high corporate entrepreneurial activity. The reason is that this research paradigm improves the explanatory power of the corporate entrepreneurship phenomenon, and helps to explore the similar entrepreneurship phenomenon under the influence of many factors in the future. In addition, the conclusions of this study provide important reference value for Chinese business managers to make strategic decisions on entrepreneurship, and provide a variety of ways for enterprises to effectively activate their entrepreneurial activity.