Entrepreneurship in Dynamic Environments: A Comparison Between the U.S. and China

Abstract

This review paper summarizes some current literature regarding entrepreneurship in dynamic environments, with a specific focus on the Chinese and U.S. contexts. In the first section, we review research on how entrepreneurs manage the environmental dynamism that technology changes often trigger in the U.S. setting. Specifically, we discuss three levels of analysis – individual (managerial cognition and microfoundations), team (top management team and board), and inter-organizational (partner relationships). In the second section, we review research on how entrepreneurs deal with the environmental dynamism that institutional changes often create in the Chinese setting. Here we emphasize three aspects of institutional change - decreased institutional barriers, emerging institutional intermediaries, and temporal institutional inconsistencies. In the Discussion and Conclusion, we highlight how Chinese researchers and entrepreneurs can learn from U.S.-based entrepreneurship research and vice versa. Importantly, we call for scholars to build collaborative partnerships across countries and between two often separated streams of entrepreneurship research.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, China, Dynamic Environment, Chinese Entrepreneurship, U.S. Entrepreneurship