EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Corporate shareholdings and organizational ambidexterity in high-tech SMEs: Evidence from a transitional economy

Eric Gedajlovic, Qing Cao and Hongping Zhang

Journal of Business Venturing, 2012, vol. 27, issue 6, 652-665

Abstract: As important engines for economic development in transitional nations, high-tech SMEs are confronted with numerous business opportunities, but are at the same time faced with developing institutions and a legacy of government involvement in their domestic environments. We examine the case of Chinese high-tech SMEs and develop a strategic orientation framework distinguishing between exploitation and exploration-type opportunities which accounts for the possibility that managers of such firms may attend to one, both, or neither. We find that shareholdings by top-managers promote a dual “ambidextrous” focus on both types, but that governmental share ownership leads to an orientation focusing on neither. We also find that the degree to which these firms utilize comprehensive decision-making processes partially mediates these main effects. Implications regarding the entrepreneurial performance of firms and economies in transitional contexts are discussed.

Keywords: Chinese SMEs; Opportunity identification and evaluation; Corporate ownership; Decision comprehensiveness; Organizational ambidexterity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902611000553
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:27:y:2012:i:6:p:652-665

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2011.06.001

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:27:y:2012:i:6:p:652-665