Far from the Tree? Do Private Entrepreneurs Agglomerate Around Public Sector Incumbents During Economic Transition?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tan, David; Tan, Justin
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; York University - Canada
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2017.1111
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 113-132
• 关键词: Entrepreneurship; spawning; agglomeration; regulatory environment; economic transition

摘要

While it is well known that state enterprises in transition economies were displaced by private enterprises at a macro level, little is known about whether private entrepreneurs emerged in a way that helped preserve or shift preexisting agglomerations of industrial activity at a microgeographic level. To address this question, we integrate competing perspectives on the role of large, bureaucratic incumbents in spawning entrepreneurs. We conceptualize a trade-off between two countervailing effects of large incumbents on potential entrepreneurs: bureaucratic socialization and exposure to capabilities. This yields novel predictions about how different kinds of startups agglomerate around different kinds of incumbents. We test these predictions using fine-grained geographic data on founding rates by private entrepreneurs in China's bicycle manufacturing industry. Consistent with our theorized trade-off, we find evidence of a nonmonotonic effect of incumbent size on local founding rates by private entrepreneurs. Additional moderating effects are consistent with boundary conditions on the hypothesized mechanisms. Our results provide the first empirical investigation of the extent to which entrepreneurial activity agglomerated around public sector incumbents during economic transition. We discuss how these insights add to the understanding of economic transition as well as how the context of economic transition adds to the understanding of entrepreneurial spawning.