Abstract
Although scholars have recognized that entrepreneurial activities vary across their embedded contexts, the existing literature still relies primarily on theories developed within the context of Western liberal market economy, in which government rarely interferes with business. We argue that China’s socialist market economic system, which emphasizes the government’s macro-control in business, creates differences in the conceptualization of entrepreneurial ecosystem. We apply a network-based analysis framework to review actors’ interaction examined by scholars in entrepreneurial ecosystem literature published in English and Chinese journals from 2000 to 2022. We find that differences between Western entrepreneurial ecosystems and Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystems mainly result from the Chinese government’s dominant institutional role. Such differences make the concept of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Chinese practice distinctively different from the current Western-based conceptualization of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Based on our findings, we propose a research agenda for future entrepreneurial ecosystem network research focusing on the Chinese context and related contexts.
Plain English Summary
Do “entrepreneurial ecosystems” represent the same concept worldwide? Our review of the academic literature demonstrates that contexts vary significantly enough around the world that scholars have been using this generic term to describe widely different realities. The Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem ultimately differs from that employed in the Western context. Adopting a network-based view to compare articles on Western and Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystems from English and Chinese journals, we find differences in the resource exchange and network governance in the interactions among actors from multiple levels. Further, we demonstrate that nearly all these differences result from the dominant role of the Chinese government in the entrepreneurial ecosystems compared to the government’s supplement role argued in the existing Western literature. Our review encourages scholars to explore the fundamental differences that exist in non-Western contexts and to develop indigenous theories consistent with such non-Western settings.
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Data Availability
Please contact the authors for the review data of the review papers. The list of the review papers can also be accessed through the link on the website page of the Small Business Economics journal.
Notes
In the rest of the paper, the English language journals will be referred to as Western journals as the theories applied in them are almost universally from the Western context, and even the vast majority of research settings are Western.
As we want to include as many papers for examination as possible, we follow the previous review on EE literature to set the starting point for the initial article searching in 2000 (Chen et al., 2020) for scholars often view 2000 as the starting point of significant body of entrepreneurship focused scholarship with the publication of the theory article by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) defining the domain. We also made another search with no time limitation, and we find no qualified published articles in our journal of choice before 2000. As we filtered the paper to lock the final papers for our review, the publication time of the final papers ranges from 2004 to 2022, which is around the time when scholar first introduce the concept of ecosystem into entrepreneurship field (Cohen, 2006; Dunn, 2005). Thus, we can see that interaction network becomes an important element along with the emerging of EE concept.
The 30 leading journal list includes Management World, The Journal of Quantitative & Technical Economics, China Soft Science, Journal of Financial Research, Chinese Journal of Management Science, Journal of Systems Engineering, Accounting Research, Journal of Systems & Management, Management Review, Journal of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Nankai Business Review, Science Research Management, Journal of The China Society for Scientific and Technical Information, Journal of Public Management, Journal of Management Science, Forecasting, Operations Research and Management Science, Studies in Science of Research, China Industrial Economy, Issues in Agricultural Economy, Chinese Journal of Management, Industrial Engineering and Management, Systems Engineering, Science of Science and Management of S.& T., R&D Management, China Population, Resources and Environment, Journal of Applied Statistics and Management, Chinese Rural Economy, System Engineering Theory and Practice, and Journal of Management Sciences in China.
We did not assign the two Chinese articles reviewing the Western literature to the Western EE set because they focus on the “incubation network” (Zhang et al., 2011, Chinese; Hu et al., 2013, Chinese), which is a specific topic focus that mainly in the Chinese journals rather than in the Western journals.
We discuss the differences of universities here to provide a clear comparison between the Western and Chinese EE literature.
We categorized the papers according to the node and link perspectives of the focal actors in each paper. Thus, our category here only suggest that Western literature tends to study the dyadic interaction of meso-level actors (e.g., incubator and startups) all together with other links from an ego level, instead of treating single dyadic interactions from a focal dyadic level.
But we note that the differences on macro environment embedding EEs spread in various node and link levels. We solely present the most significant differences here to present a clear picture.
We also check for practical support in two highly valued practitioner journals, which are Harvard Business Review (a Western journal) and Tinghsu Business Review (the Chinese journal). Overall, while Western scholars have been arguing an important but supplement role of government (e.g., Isenberg, 2014), Chinese cases keep rising a fact that the governments and large firms are two pillars that lead the development of EEs, especially regarding financial support (Liu & Ma, 2021, Chinese; Zhang et al., 2022, Chinese; Li, 2021, Chinese), which consistent with the major differences we found in the academic literature.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express our thanks to the editor and reviewers’ insightful comments for helping improve this paper.
Funding
This research was supported by the major project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) “Research on Major Theoretical and Practice Issues in Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship” (Grant No. 72091310), Project 1 “Developing Theory on Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurship in the Digital Economy” (Grant No. 72091315), and the international (regional) cooperative research project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) “The Mechanism of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Formation: An Opportunity Development Perspective” (Grant No. 71620107001).
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Cai, L., Sheng, N., Bruton, G.D. et al. Redefining the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China from a network-based view: A review and proposal for future research. Small Bus Econ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00905-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-024-00905-3
Keywords
- Entrepreneurial ecosystem
- Actors’ interaction
- Network-based analysis framework
- Literature review
- Contextual differences