Exploratory Case Study On The Effect Of Institutional Entrepreneurship Of Privately-owned Enterprises In China’s Transitional Economy

The research on institutional entrepreneurship has developed over 20 years. The question of how institutional entrepreneurs establish new institutions has become the focus of this research. However, although most scholars concentrated on the analyses of institutional entrepreneurs’ activities, viewpoints of study were muddled. It is difficult to solve the above question due to their confused views. Institutional entrepreneurship is essentially a dynamic process between institutional constraint and agency of actors. Institutional entrepreneurs apply many institutional entrepreneurship strategies to break through institutional constraint and establish new institutions.This paper applies multiple cases studies integrating with historical analysis, content analysis, contingency table analysis, and chooses four privately-owned enterprises Greely Group, ZT Online, Spring Airlines and Alibaba Group as samples of the multiple cases studies. Based on distinguishing the types of institutional entrepreneurship and dividing the stages of institutional entrepreneurship, this paper analyzes the main types of institutional constraint and institutional entrepreneurship strategies used by actors in different stages. Further, this paper reveals the effect of institutional entrepreneurship through combining institutional constraint with institutional entrepreneurship strategiesThe conclusions are as following:firstly, the process of institutional entrepreneurship of privately-owned enterprises in China’s transitional economy have two types, including perfecting type and pioneering type, and can be divided into three stages, including establishing foundation of innovation, theorization and promotion of new institutions; secondly, during the first two stages, four privately-owned enterprises mainly confront institutional constraint of regulation, and during the stage of the promotion of new institutions, four privately-owned enterprises mainly confront institutional constraint of cognition; thirdly, during the first two stages, four privately-owned enterprises mainly apply rhetorical strategies, distributed resources strategies and theorization strategies, and during the stage of the promotion of new institutions, four privately-owned enterprises mainly apply culture strategy; finally, theorization strategies are mainly used to break through institutional constraint of regulation and normative, culture strategies are mainly used to break through institutional constraint of cognition.Building upon the earlier research conclusions, this paper combs the research contents of institutional entrepreneurship strategies and constructs the model of the effect of institutional entrepreneurship of privately-owned enterprises in China’s transitional economy based on revealing the effect of institutional entrepreneurship. In addition, this paper not only enriches the research context but also expands the research on institutional entrepreneurship and promotes the development of institutional entrepreneurship theory in china.