How Corporate Digital Entrepreneurship Overcome Organizational Inertia?

Recently,with the great support of policies provided by the government,corporates have used digital technology to improve existing or develop new products and services,changing organizational structures,and striving to achieve digital transformation,so as to gain a firm foothold in the torrent of the digital age.As a result,the discussion on "digital innovation-driven entrepreneurship of large enterprises" in the field of academic entrepreneurship has been set off,and a new research direction of corporate digital entrepreneurship(CDE)has emerged as a combination of corporate entrepreneurship(CE)and digital entrepreneurship(DE)research.Due to the dependence of enterprises on the path of previous successful development models in the process of entrepreneurial growth,it is inevitable that organizational inertia(OI)will form,hinder organizational transformation,and then adversely affect the CDE.At this time,how to overcome the negative impact of OI on the CDE has become a urgent problem that needs enterprises to address.At the same time,existing studies have shown that the inhibition of OI on CDE varies depending on the internal and external situation in which the enterprise is located..According to the above analysis,different from most studies that explore the promotion mechanism of CDE from the perspective of positive factors,this research starts with the negative factors of CDE,and based on the configuration theory,introduces four major factors:digital capabilities(DC),entrepreneurial culture(EC),institutional support(IS),and strategic alliances(SA)to explore how enterprises overcome OI with the support of internal and external factors,so as to create favorable conditions for CDE.First of all,this research systematically sorts out related literature on CE,DE,OI,DC,EC,IS to defines the concept of CDE and divides it’s dimension,and then analyzes how OI negatively affects CDE,and builds a mechanism model for the enterprise to overcome the inhibitory effect of OI on the CDE with the contingency effect of comprehensive environmental factors.After that,the empirical analysis of the effective data of 349 enterprises was carried out by using the questionnaire survey method,and the results found that:(1)OI as a multidimensional construct is the key factor hindering the CDE;(2)DC,EC,and SA have a significant effect on overcoming OI,and IS has not been proven to eliminate OI;(3)On the basis of distinguishing insight,action,and psychological inertia,there are significant differences in the elimination mechanisms of OI for three types of situational factors: DC,EC,and SA.In the next part,this research has a certain theoretical contributions,which are mainly manifested in:(1)This research focuses on the issues of entrepreneurship in the digital era,focusing on the existing digital entrepreneurial documents in the company’s entrepreneurial scene,expanding and deepening the theoretical research of existing company entrepreneurship,and promoting the integration of entrepreneurial management,strategic management and innovative management research;(2)This research links OI to CDE,filling a gap that previous research has overlooked when discussing the inhibitors of CDE;(3)Based on the analysis of configuration theory,from the internal and external perspectives of organization and environment,this research discusses the immune mechanism of OI on corporate entrepreneurship in the digital age,so as to provide management reference for enterprises in the digital age to reduce the failure rate of CE.Finally,the conclusion provides related management inspiration for enterprises to overcome the different types of OI in the process of CDE:(1)In the face of insight inertia,enterprises need to cultivate EC and build SA with investment as the core to help companies accurately recognize the changes in the external environment with an open mind;(2)When enterprises exist action inertia,in addition to the EC and SA,the DC which is cultivated in the level of organization and employee is a key means to overcome the action inertia;(3)When enterprises need to overcome psychological inertia,cultivating EC is an important method of reducing the psychological anxiety and defense of organizational members,and actively participating in digital innovation and value creation.In summary,exploring the implementation mechanism of CDE must not only consider actively promoting factors,but also start from overcoming negative inhibitory factors —OI.According to the configuration theory,based on the perspective of organization and environment matching,this research uses mixed research methods to explore the mechanism of overcoming OI to realize CDE.