Organisational Resilience, Network Embeddedness and Business Model Innovation: Evidence from China

Despite business model innovation (BMI) being considered the primary factor to ensure the survival and success of firms in a turbulent environment, comprehensive empirical studies of the antecedents of BMI based on crisis management and disaster management are limited. This study develops a theoretical framework and integrates internal and external factors of drivers of BMI to explore how organisational resilience and network embeddedness impact BMI and its underlying mechanism with Chinese unique empirical evidence under the crisis. We distinguish three dimensions (robustness, agility and integrity) of organisational resilience and two dimensions (structural and relational embeddedness) of network embeddedness. The results validate that robustness and agility can significantly promote BMI. Likewise, both structural and relational embeddedness have a significant positive association with BMI. Besides, organisational learning capacity mediates the relationship between organisational resilience, network embeddedness and BMI. This study contributes to research on BMI and provides theoretical guidance for organisations to leverage BMI to cope with crisis.