Study on the “Leadership-resilience-performance” transmission mechanism of high-tech new ventures from the perspective of multi-theoretical integration: boundary effects of environmental characteristics and empirical verification in the context of China’s transitional economy

Abstract

The leadership-resilience-performance transmission mechanism is a core issue that business leaders and scholars worldwide seek to thoroughly understand. The ability of high-tech new ventures to leverage entrepreneurial leadership and build organizational resilience typically determines their survival and high-quality development amid resource constraints and environmental uncertainty. Often these capabilities reshape the competitive landscape of China’s transitioning economy by enabling firms to address resource gaps, navigate policy shifts, and counter predatory challenges. Although these types of capacity-building efforts are rooted in sound theoretical frameworks that promote innovation and resource orchestration, business leaders and incumbent enterprises in China must examine every contextual opportunity to remain competitive amid unique institutional pressures. The opportunity investigated in this explanatory quantitative study is the understanding of the contextualized mechanism of how entrepreneurial leadership drives performance through organizational resilience, shaped by China’s dual policy-market dynamics. This quantitative study focused on incumbent leaders and founders of high-tech new ventures in mainland China to explore the chain mediation effect of organizational resilience and the adaptive moderation effects of environmental dynamism and competitiveness on the leadership-performance link. The data was collected from a stratified random sample of 258 incumbent-led high-tech new ventures established over the past decade in China’s fast-growing economy, characterized by an emerging middle class and rapid technological innovation cycles. This research took place during a period of evolving global trade dynamics and ongoing tensions between the governments of China and the United States. The outcome of this study could assist all business leaders and policymakers by understanding and appreciating the Sino-Western differences in the innovation-resilience-performance relationship, as well as providing actionable guidance for optimizing management practices and supporting the development of new quality-producing productive forces in China’s transitioning economy.