Purpose: Since the limited growth of enterprises has been identified as a deliberate choice of women entrepreneurs, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the institutional environment of an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) fosters the gender gap in entrepreneurial growth intention. The mediating role of the perceived institutional environment in the gender effect on entrepreneurial growth intention is tested in the Chinese context. As individuals’ cognitions are usually influenced by their cultural orientations, the gender difference in perceptions of the institutional environment is considered to be contingent on entrepreneurs’ self-construal.Design/methodology/approach: Using a multiregional sample of 206 Chinese entrepreneurs who completed the questionnaire, the study obtained results by adopting a structural equation modelling analysis with a partial least squares approach.Findings: There are significant gender gaps in perceptions of the institutional environment and growth intention among Chinese entrepreneurs. Due to their limited political ties and lower legitimacy in economic activities in the country, Chinese women entrepreneurs have more negative perceptions of the regulative and cognitive institutional environment than their male counterparts, which accounts for the lack of growth ambition among Chinese women entrepreneurs. Independent self-construal enlarges the difference in environmental perceptions between male and female entrepreneurs.Originality/value: This research enriches the discussion in the emerging area of EEs by adequately responding to the highlighted target to advance ambitious entrepreneurship and offering an interpretation of its evolutionary thinking. Given the increasing calls for a focus on high-growth women’s entrepreneurship, this study provides an explanation for how the institutional environment engenders the absence of women in growth-oriented entrepreneurial activities. It also uncovers the overlooked deficiency in institutional practice by highlighting the gender inequality in the implementation process of entrepreneurial support policies and the distribution of entrepreneurial capabilities in society.

Digital transformation is rapidly emerging as a pivotal topic in business and academic discourse. Prior research has emphasized the profound impact of digital transformation on firm innovation. However, the precise influence of digital transformation on different forms of innovation remains unclear. Meanwhile, the role of change in innovation structures has largely been overlooked. This study investigates how digital transformation influences both exploitative and exploratory innovation through the decentralization of formal and informal innovation structures. Using a dataset of 26,014 patent applications from 156 listed companies in the core industries of China's digital economy, this study demonstrates a prominent promoting effect of digital transformation on exploratory and exploitative innovation. Digital transformation broadens a firm's information channels and facilitates organizational agility by accelerating decision-making, which in turn promotes exploitative innovation. It also enhances a firm's absorptive capacity and empowers it to identify and meet new consumer demands, fostering exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this study reveals that digital transformation challenges the traditional power structures of innovation decisions, enabling formal and informal structures to become more decentralized, which promotes knowledge flows and managerial incentives and, thus, positively affects exploitative innovation. These findings provide a deeper understanding of digital transformation and innovation management.

Purpose: From the perspective of cause and effect, the operational processes of property insurance companies can be considered as historical events. The purpose of this study is to measure the operating efficiency of China's property insurance industry, explore the determinants that affect technical efficiency and outline the path to achieving high-quality development. Design/methodology/approach: We chose 44 Chinese property insurance companies as research objects. The data were obtained from the Chinese Insurance Yearbook and China Statistical Yearbook 2015–2017. First, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method was used to calculate the technical efficiency of property insurance companies. Then, Tobit regression and quantile regression were adopted to explore the influencing factors of technical efficiency. Finally, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method was employed to summarize the path to improving the operating efficiency of property insurance companies. Findings: The empirical results in the first stage suggested that the operation efficiency of China's property insurance industry was technically inefficient, and the scale efficiency was relatively better than the pure technical efficiency. In the second stage, we observed that the drivers for firm size, reinsurance rate, claim ratio and equity restriction were important determinants of an insurance firm's efficiency. Research limitations/implications: We also put forward four applicable, targeted and proven ways to improve the technical efficiency of property insurance companies. These configurations are verified by cases of existing property insurance companies, which can provide practical references for the insurance industry. Originality/value: Our research enriches the insurance literature and efficiency methods, particularly regarding the specific paths of improving the technical efficiency. The relationship between elements and results is analyzed from a systematic perspective, and the research results are not only more consistent with what logic might imply but also more instructive for the improvement of reality.

The use of a gender-neutral approach to explore the contextual determinants of female entrepreneurship may preclude us from unraveling the complex institutions that tend to treat men and women asymmetrically, namely gendered institutions. This paper uses institutional theory to highlight different institutional patterns from a gendered perspective. In particular, drawing upon Scott’s well-known formulation of three institutional categories, we examine how three pillars of gendered institutions—regulative, normative and cognitive gendered institutions—shape both the absolute and the relative levels of female entrepreneurial activity, that is, female total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) rate and female/male TEA ratio. Using cross-sectional data for 63 countries in 2013, we employ exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis and find that all three dimensions of gendered institutions have significant influences on the relative levels of female entrepreneurial activity, while only regulative and cognitive gendered institutions are significantly related to the absolute level of female entrepreneurship. Specifically, regulative gendered institutions have negative impacts, while cognitive gendered institutions have positive impacts. In addition, among the three distinct dimensions of gendered institutions, cognitive gendered institutions have the most important effect on both levels of female entrepreneurship. Implications for research and policy are discussed.