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Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study aims to address this gap.

The authors develop a novel conceptual framework applying the distinction between the two types of economic adaptation to stakeholder theory.

The authors argue that the idea of cooperative adaptation is particularly useful for describing the firm’s collaboration with primary stakeholders in the joint value creation process. In contrast, autonomous adaptation is more relevant for firms interacting with secondary stakeholders who are not directly engaged in joint value creation and may not have formal contractual relationships with the firm. Accordingly, cooperative adaptation can be seen as vital for resolving team production problems affecting joint value creation, whereas autonomous adaptation addresses how the firm maintains legitimacy within the larger stakeholder environment.

Similar to its significance for transaction cost economics, the distinction between the two types of adaptation equips stakeholder theory with a new systematic understanding of a potentially broad spectrum of firm–stakeholder collaboration forms.

This study aims to extend the understanding of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) by investigating the international EO (IEO) from the perspective of the international performance of born global firms. The born global firm's EOs toward global firms led to innovation and dynamic organizational capabilities and to improve the firms' international performance and development.

It is a hypothesis that IEO predicted that utilization of export promotion programs (EPPs) would be positively associated with international performance. The samples of 405 respondents were collected from born global firms to acquire higher international performance of firms in China. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and mediation analysis are processed to test the proposed hypotheses empirically.

The results from the SEM test revealed that the network relationships and utilization of EPPs fully mediate the effect of IEO on international performance. These results indicate that not only IEO is an important factor of network relationships but also the utilization of EPPs and international performance for born global firms. IEO can motivate managers to find the right network relationships and ultimately improve company performance. The IEO of the initiative has strong impact on the performance of international firms.

There is a comprehensive view among the relationships of IEO, entrepreneurial competencies and the network utilization of government EPPs, international performance in the context of born global firms. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in detail.