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The purpose of this paper is to apply the social cognitive theory and social learning theory to examine the different mechanisms through which entrepreneurs’ moral awareness and ethical behavior affect the product innovation of new ventures.

The authors collected survey data from 150 founders and 389 founding team members of new ventures in China in 2015. The final sample contained 113 questionnaires from entrepreneurs and 246 questionnaires from their founding team members. Regression analyses were used to test direct effects, and Preacher and Hayes’ (2004) formal mediation test approach with bootstrapping method was used to evaluate the mediation effects.

The findings indicate that the ethical levels of entrepreneurs can affect the product innovation of a new venture through two paths: entrepreneurs with low levels of moral awareness tend to be more individually creative, which facilitates product innovation, and entrepreneurs with high levels of ethical behavior can make founding teams more creative, which also promotes product innovation.

The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurs are not negatively affected by their low moral awareness as long as they exhibit high ethical behavior with founding team members. But such low moral awareness has to be genuine. The best way to promote product innovation in the long run is to create an organizational culture of ethical behavior rather than to ignore moral issues in decision-making.

This study challenges the assumption that moral awareness and ethical behavior are always consistent. It takes an initial step to resolve the contradiction in the current literature regarding the relationship between the ethical levels of entrepreneurs and product innovation in the context of founders and founding teams in new ventures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between industry association membership and firm innovation in Chinese private ventures. A secondary objective is to investigate potential moderating effects of firm learning practices and founder characteristics on the above relationship, and to draw out implications for policymakers and practitioners.

The paper utilizes data from a sample of 567 Chinese entrepreneurial firms operating in 9 designated emerging industries. Hierarchical regression models were employed to analyze the effect of industry association membership on firm innovation, and the potential moderating effects. A 2SLS procedure was adopted to control for potential endogeneity issue. Supplemental analyses were conducted to ensure the robustness of the findings.

The paper provides empirical insights about how industry association membership, along with firm learning practice and founder leadership, affect firm innovation in Chinese private ventures in emerging industries. It suggests that industry association membership positively affects firm innovation. Further, there is a three-way interaction effect of industry association membership, learning practice and founder power on innovation.

Due to the design of the data set, there are some limitations. First, the study only considered whether a firm belongs to an industry association, but not the nature of such membership (length, firm status in the association, etc.). Second, the cross-sectional design may limit the power of the study to make casual implications about the tested relationships.

The paper provides important practical implications for policymakers and entrepreneurs in China. In general, the results suggest that private ventures pursuing innovation in emerging industries can benefit from industry associations, and entrepreneurs shall actively engage in firm-level and personal-level learning. For policymakers, the study suggests that to foster innovation in an emerging industry, special attention shall be paid to building necessary institutional support to develop and to strengthen the role of industry association in the industry.

This paper fulfills an important gap in the literature in that it is one of the first, which investigates the role of the industry association in firm innovation, especially in a non-western context. This paper provides new insights into the role of industry association and firm innovation in an under-researched developing economy context.

A lot of researches suggest that work experience plays an important role in the process of venture gestation. However, previous studies cannot explain “why there is a huge difference in the entrepreneurial success rate of those persons who have work experience”. Drawing insights from the model of “job embeddedness” in human resources management research field, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of on‐the‐job embeddedness on the centrality of entrepreneurial activities and the duration of venture creation activities.

Multiple regression is applied to test the hypotheses, using the dataset from the American “Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics” (PSED I).

The results suggest entrepreneur's previous work experience may result in scattered venture creation activities and the duration of entrepreneurial activity extended. It means the higher degree of on‐the‐job embedded the founder has, he or she feels more compatible with current job and more comfortable in the current work environment.

Individuals who leave current jobs and start their own business are likely to promise personal losses (e.g. giving up colleagues, interesting projects or pleasant perks). So they consistently face an inordinate amount of risk and the entrepreneurial activities and longer term of venture gestation. If individual wants to start new firms quickly and efficiently, he should not only focus on the skills needed to perform his current job, but also should train his comprehensive management skills, even entrepreneurial ability by any possible ways during the work history of being an employee.

The paper enhances our understanding of the influence of employee's work history on the new venture creation by applying job embeddedness theory. It enlightens individuals who plan to create their own ventures to apply their on‐the‐job embeddedness to improve the success rate of entrepreneurial activities.

To study how entrepreneurial environments influence entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities in China.

This paper constructs statistical models to test the relationship between environmental factors and entrepreneurial opportunities or capacities in 13 cities in China according to the conceptual model of GEM. Based on the data derived from GEM reports, the authors use principal component of factor analysis and lest square regression to study the impacts of entrepreneurial environments on entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities empirically.

This paper indicates that among 13 Chinese cities, if one city has more favorable conditions in terms of nine factors of entrepreneurial environments, it will have more entrepreneurial opportunities, and its entrepreneur will have higher capacities. Moreover, the authors find the extent of the impacts of the economic and cultural environments on entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities is higher than that of political and market environments.

The quantity of sample statistics is relatively small, because it is difficult to develop the GEM project roundly in China.

This paper provides Chinese government with theoretical support so that the government can utilize limited resources to develop entrepreneurial activities. Meanwhile, it furthers foreign researchers and investors to understand the specific conditions in terms of Chinese entrepreneurial environments, opportunities, and capacities more clearly.

This study aims to examine, by drawing upon resource dependence theory and upper echelon theory, how entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic statuses and political characteristics influence the establishment of formal political ties by new ventures, and how these relationships are moderated by new ventures’ degrees of innovation and internationalization.

An empirical research approach is used in this paper. This is because this model evaluates the interaction effects between the socioeconomic statuses and political characteristics of entrepreneurs and the market strategies of their new ventures. Moderated multiple regression models were used to test our hypotheses with data from 2,297 new ventures in China.

Using a questionnaire survey about new ventures in China, it was found that entrepreneurs’ socioeconomic statuses and political characteristics are positively related to the establishment of formal political ties by new ventures. It was also found that this positive relationship is stronger when new ventures have a higher degree of internationalization, while the relationship between the socioeconomic statuses of entrepreneurs’ and the establishment of formal political ties by new ventures is weaker when new ventures have a higher degree of innovation.

This research provides a deeper insight into the personal roles that are played in the establishment of formal political ties and it advances the research into new ventures’ competitive strategies.

This study reveals the situations in which formal political ties are connected with new-venture advantages in China, and it will help entrepreneurs establish and use formal political ties strategically to correspond with the different strategies of new ventures.

This research distinguishes the effects of two types of personal status on the establishment of formal political ties by new ventures, and it contributes to an understanding of the situations under which entrepreneurs should establish formal political ties. The findings will also be helpful for entrepreneurs who are choosing how to combine their market and non-market strategies.