《动态环境中的创业活动:中美对比》评述

A Commentary on Entrepreneurship in Dynamic Environments:A Comparison between the U.S.and China

近30年来,在创业领域涌现了两类不同的文献:动态环境中的创业和制度变迁中的创业。这两类文献提供了两种相异但又相关的理论框架。Wu等(2020)指出,"动态环境中的创业"文献多基于美国及其他西方国家的经验,更侧重研究创业者本身,比如创业者的自身认知、创业者团队在寻求商机时依循的惯例,以及创业者如何在效率和弹性中寻得平衡(efficiency-flexibility balance)。另一类文献,即"制度变迁中的创业"文献,则更侧重制度环境,比如不同制度环境下创业者如何适应变化。本评述赞同Wu、Eesley与Eisenhardt的基本论点,并在此基础上作出几点延伸。第一,研究中国创业,制度环境固然重要,创业者个人因素同样重要。中国的创业研究应勇于跳出"制度变迁"的框架,看是否能在"动态环境"的框架下,形成理论创新。比如,中国公司和创业者提供了诸多与"效率-弹性平衡"相关的案例(例如,腾讯的内部"赛马"竞争策略)。这些基于创业者、创业团队本身的案例为"动态环境"框架下的理论创新提供了土壤。第二,我们需要更多地探讨新经济和数字化企业。这类企业不但在适应制度环境发展,也在一定层面上改变了中国的制度环境;这类企业亦受到鲜明的企业文化和创业者风格影响。研究这类企业可以改变我们对制度变迁和动态环境研究的认知。

In the last thirty years,two prominent streams of literature have emerged to study entrepreneurship in China and the U.S.:(1)entrepreneurship in dynamic environments and nascent markets;and(2)entrepreneurship during institutional change.They have provided two distinct yet related frameworks.Wu,Eesley,&Eisenhardt(2020)argue that the first stream primarily centers around entrepreneurial activities that take place in the U.S.and other western countries.It focuses on the entrepreneur,covering topics that range from managerial cognition to routines and heuristics used by top management teams to seek out market opportunities,to how entrepreneurs strike a balance between efficiency and flexibility.The second stream,which centers around institutional change,focuses on how entrepreneurs adapt to changing institutional environments.In this review article,I largely concur with the basic arguments outlined in Wu et al..Additionally,I provide several extensions via which their arguments may be re-interpreted and adapted to study newly arising phenomena.First,the Chinese start-up scene provides rich contexts for theory-building around managerial cognition and the efficiency-flexibility balance(e.g.,the internal competition mechanism at Tencent).Therefore,China scholars should try to venture out of the institutional change framework that has heavily dominated China-related studies.Second,Chinese scholars need to embrace and engage with—theoretically and empirically—the new,digital economy that is flourishing in China.Digital firms in China are not only adapting to changing institutions in the traditional sense,but they are also creating new institutions and changing the rules of the game for individuals and organizations large and small.Focusing on the new economy may lead us to alter our collective understanding of institutional change and dynamic environments.