The "Belt And Road" Initiative And Innovation Ambidextrity Of China’s Bri-participating Enterprises

“Belt and Road Initiative”(BRI)has created new historical opportunities for the development of China and the world.The macro-economic consequences of BRI have increased attention from policy-makers,academics and practitioners,however,the implementation of the BRI ultimately needs to be implemented by micro-economic entities,while the micro-level effects of the BRI remain under-theorized.The BRI not only encourages Chinese enterprises to make full use of the existing excess capacity and relative technological advantages to explore the markets of countries along the route,but also advocates enterprises to innovate and achieve breakthrough development of new technologies and industries with "going out" strategy.So,has this policy received the expected effect? With the steady implementation of the BRI,have Chinese enterprises responded positively in terms of nurturing their innovation ambidexterity?After sorting out the relevant literature,it is found that although scholars generally believe that enterprise innovation behavior and consequences should be jointly shaped by institution-,industry-,and resource-related factors,whereas extant studies have been dependent on industry-and/or resource-based view,largely underplaying the key role of institutional factors.Therefore,this paper draws on “Strategy Tripod” perspective to integrate the institution-,industry-,and resource-based views to examine the direct effect of the BRI(institutional factors)on innovation ambidexterity of enterprises,and the moderating effect of product market competition(industry factors),financial slack(enterprise resource factor)between them,so as to determine whether the impact of the BRI on the enterprises’ innovation ambidexterity further depends on the specific situation,and clarify the boundary conditions of the BRI.Treating the BRI implementation as a natural experiment,we employ the Chinese A-share listed companies’ data from 2010 to 2019 and the differences-in-differences(DID)approach to empirically test the impact of the BRI on innovation ambidexterity among these Chinese companies.Our findings provide evidence that the implementation of BRI significantly improves innovation ambidexterity of the BRI-participating enterprises,and this effect is more pronounced for privately-owned companies,and those in emerging industries and located in export-oriented node cities along the Belt and Road.Furthermore,Due to competitive effect,the higher the degree of competition in the product market competition,the more promotion effect of BRI on innovation ambidexterity,whereas financial slack dampens such an effect due to the increasing threat of agency problems within these companies.This study enriches the research on antecedents to innovation ambidexterity by fully investigating the impact of institution-,industry-,and resource-based factors.At the same time,our findings are also conducive for the BRI-participating enterprises to better manage their dual efforts in exploitation and exploration in order to improve their sustainable innovation capability.