With environmental pollution, climate change and resource scarcity being serious global issues, green entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as an approach to simultaneously address economic performance, environmental impact and social responsibility. As green entrepreneurship needs to consider both venture performance and social responsibility, it will be subject to legitimacy constraints at the system level. Whether these legitimacy constraints are favorable to green enterprise is not yet clear from current research. Especially for transition economies, the problem of whether proactive green enterprises facing legitimacy constraints under institutional uncertainty can achieve green performance requires further study. Thus, a theoretical model to determine the relationship between green proactiveness orientation (GPO), green performance, legitimacy, and transitional economics was proposed. Based on the data from 235 new Chinese green firms, the empirical results suggest that green startups launch with a green proactiveness orientation, which enables them to acquire a green performance advantage over their competitors. Improvements in green performance is also shown to be driven by the pressure from institutional legitimacy. Better green performance can be easily achieved if green startups have a higher level of legitimacy. However, against the background of transitional economies, the increase in institutional uncertainty will damage the promotion of political legitimacy and make the enterprises that are subject to political legitimacy constraints lose their green performance. Currently, political legitimacy is no longer an impetus. However, the increase in institutional uncertainty will strengthen the promotion of commercial legitimacy and cause green-oriented startups to pursue more commercial interests. Thus, to a certain extent, it will lead to market uncertainty. The conclusion of this study not only provides guidance for startups in different industries to develop green actions under the pressure of institutional constraints but also warns governments to improve policies and regulations quickly under different situations of institutional uncertainty.

For countries in the process of economic transition, improvement of industrialization is no longer the sole goal of their economic development. While upgrading the level of industrial development, these countries also gradually attach importance to resource utilization efficiency and environmental protection, which is why green entrepreneurship has become increasingly popular in recent years. With the intensification of policy guidance, a new “sea area” named green entrepreneurship ushers in more and more “treasure hunters” exploring “the treasure” therein. Based on this, this paper constructs the model of “Green Ocean Treasure Hunting” for green entrepreneurial enterprises to analyze the role played by their government’s relevant policies and puts forward the research proposition of this article based on the relevant literature. On this basis, this paper chooses and analyzes a medium-sized, high-tech enterprise in China which follows a certain typical green entrepreneurial process as evidence of the propositions we have put forward.

The Jingyi strategy, an emerging strategic management concept rooted in the Chinese context, draws on the Eastern philosophy of weijing weiyi (pursuing refinement and singleness of purpose) and creatively integrates Western strategic management theory. Its discriminant validity from the focus, specialization, and niche strategies remains untested. Synthesizing literature published between 2000 and 2026, this review clarifies the strategy’s three-dimensional core—focus, refinement, and persistence—and traces its convergence with Chinese and Western academic thought. It draws evidence from 23 core studies, stating the evidential basis for each element. Direct evidence covers orientation and managerial cognition among the antecedents, firm performance and competitive advantage among the outcomes, and all three moderators (absorptive capacity, exploratory learning and environmental dynamism). The remaining antecedents and outcomes, and the four mediating mechanisms (resource orchestration, knowledge integration, dynamic capabilities and technological innovation), are integrated through transfer from adjacent constructs as a first-order priority for confirmation. Dark-side risks, such as specialization lock-in and environmental vulnerability, are documented for firms that have sustained the strategy. This review advances five falsifiable propositions linking the strategy to AI-empowered digital transformation, long-term orientation, ambidexterity, hidden champion entrepreneurial orientation, and sustainability. From an ambiculturalism perspective, it promotes dialog between Chinese and Western strategic thought.