Political motivation of entrepreneurial orientation: An integrated perspective of knowledge acquisition and institutions

Most existing studies believe that entrepreneurship is mainly for economic gain, while ignoring that entrepreneurship may also cater to political needs. To fill this gap, through the integration of institutional theory and knowledge-based view, we construct a moderated mediation model to explore the mechanism of political strategy influencing entrepreneurial orientation. We utilize a sample of 678 Chinese enterprises through a questionnaire survey and the results showed that: (1) Political strategy affects entrepreneurial orientation by influencing the knowledge acquisition of enterprises. In particular, the mediating effect of tacit knowledge acquisition is stronger than that of explicit knowledge acquisition. (2) Institutional environment positively moderates the mediating effect of knowledge acquisition. (3) The moderated mediating effect of institutional environment is especially obvious in non-state-owned enterprises and non-high-tech enterprises. Our research surpasses the general assumption that enterprises implement political strategies to obtain material resources and institutional legitimacy.