Adopting insights from a resource management perspective, this study investigates how entrepreneurs utilize their business ties to promote new venture growth. We propose a multiple mediator model in which different resource management processes (i.e., resource acquiring, resource bundling, and resource leveraging) act as critical mediating mechanisms. We undertook a two-stage survey design, and collected data during the period from 2013 to 2016. Drawing on a longitudinal sample of 229 new ventures in China, we tested the hypotheses through the optimal scaling regression (OSR) analysis. We find empirical support for the mediated effects of entrepreneurial business ties via resource bundling and resource leveraging to promote new venture growth. However, our results find the mediating effect of resource acquiring non-significant. These findings will deepen understanding of the role of entrepreneurial business ties in the new venture growth process and expand resource management perspective into the entrepreneurial field.

Radical innovation has attracted increasing attention in corporate sustainability research. Employing a social capital perspective, we explore how and when entrepreneurial business ties (EBTs) enhance radical innovation by considering risk taking as a critical mediator and environmental turbulence as a conditional factor of the mediation effect. Data is collected from 322 Chinese new ventures. We find empirical support for the moderated mediation model. Specifically, EBT is positively related to risk taking while risk taking is positively related to radical innovation. Risk taking further serves as a mediator in the EBT-radical innovation relationship, and this indirect effect is stronger at a high level of technological turbulence. By revealing how entrepreneurs translate their business ties into positive radical innovation outcomes through risk taking and when this indirect effect is most effective, we enhance understandings of the value of EBT and how to impel radical innovation.

Organizational capabilities, such as technological capabilities and marketing capabilities are key determinants of the success of technology commercialization (TC). However, literature has rarely explored how firms combine and balance these two potentially interrelated yet competing capabilities in pursuing successful TC. Adopting insights from the ambidexterity perspective, this article examines the tensions and interplay between technological capabilities and marketing capabilities, and conceptualizes the simultaneous pursuit of both capabilities as capability ambidexterity . We propose that, having a balancing capability (properly matching technological capabilities and marketing capabilities to avoid conflicts), a combining capability (effectively utilizing both capabilities), and simultaneously applying the balancing capability and the combining capability positively affect TC success. We also identify human resource-based conditions (high-commitment work systems) as a contingency under which the balancing capability and the combining capability are more likely to promote TC success. We report results from a sample of 262 Chinese manufacturing firms (based on a total of 524 respondents) that provide general support for the proposed model. Our results contribute to a better understanding of capability-based explanations of TC.

Purpose: The research is aimed at investigating how relational mechanisms and formal contracts affect alliance success under constructive and destructive conflict.Design/methodology/approach: While relational mechanisms and formal contracts are widely used in strategic alliances to manage a variety of issues among partners, recent research has indicated that effects of these governance mechanisms may change in distinct contexts. Adopting the lens of new institutional economics, this study provides insights on the comparative and interactive effects of relational mechanisms and formal contracts on alliance success, and the differential contingency effects of two types of inter-partner conflict, i.e. constructive and destructive conflict, on the above relationships. The authors use hierarchical multivariate regression analyses through a survey dataset of 392 alliance firms in China with the approach of two key informants.Findings: The empirical results confirm that relational mechanisms have a stronger positive effect on alliance success than formal contracts and these two governance mechanisms complement each other in driving alliance success. When facing a high level of constructive conflict, partner firms rely to a greater extent on relational mechanisms than on formal contracts to achieve alliance success. When a high level of destructive conflict exists, partner firms depend more heavily on formal contracts than on relational mechanisms to achieve alliance success. Moreover, the complementary effect of the two governance mechanisms is much stronger when partner firms face high constructive conflict than when they face high destructive conflict.Originality/value: This study discloses the comparative and interactive effects of relational mechanisms and formal contracts on alliance success in distinct contexts by identifying the moderating roles of constructive and destructive conflict.