Research on the Impact of Network Embeddedness on the Growth of Scientific and Technological Enterprises: The Chain Mediating Effect of Organizational Legitimacy and Business Model Innovation

Network embeddedness, which determines the various resources obtained by the sci-tech enterprise and ultimately affects its growth status, is the stable connection formed in the enterprise due to its previous ties and interactions. This paper introduces organizational legitimacy and business model innovation as causal dual mediating variables, constructs the chain mediating conceptual model of “network embeddedness–organizational legitimacy– business model innovation–enterprise growth”, and presents the research hypothesis accordingly.We conduct the research in the form of questionnaire and select the scale widely used in the Chinese context. In order to ensure the rationality of the questionnaire, we carry out a small sample prediction test for managers of scientific and technological enterprises as well as university experts, in which the questionnaire is modified according to their feedback results. Following this, we commission a professional research company to collect 371 valid questionnaires. The conclusions are carried out through exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchy regression analysis and Sobel model.The research shows that: First, both relational embeddedness and structural embeddedness promote the growth of scientific and technological enterprises. Second, organizational legitimacy and business model innovation play a mediating role in the relationship between network embeddedness and the growth of scientific and technological enterprises respectively, in which the mediator effect of organizational legitimacy is more significant. Third, organizational legitimacy and business model innovation play a chain mediating role in the relationship between relational embeddedness and growth of scientific and technological enterprises. Fourth, the improvement of organizational legitimacy promotes the influence of relational embeddedness and business model innovation on the growth of scientific and technological enterprises. Therefore, this paper verifies the chain mediating role of organizational legitimacy and business model innovation, clarifies the influence mechanism of network embeddedness on the growth of scientific and technological enterprises, enriches the research content in the field of network embeddedness and firm growth, and expands the applicable scope of the iceberg theory of business model.The main contributions of this research are as follows: First, it analyzes the influence mechanism of network embeddedness on the growth of scientific and technological enterprises, confirms that network embeddedness, organizational legitimacy and business model innovation are important antecedent variables in the field of enterprise growth, and further enriches the related studies of network embeddedness and enterprise growth theory. Second, it introduces organizational legitimacy and business model innovation as causal dual mediating variables, analyzes the chain mediating role of organizational legitimacy and business model innovation, as well as explores the moderating role of organizational legitimacy. These results expand the research on the influence mechanism of network embeddedness on enterprise growth, and provide a novel perspective to explain the divergence in previous research. Third, it takes Chinese local scientific and technological enterprises as the research samples, and explores the antecedents and after-effects of business model innovation from an empirical perspective, which further develops the research content of the iceberg theory of business model and establishes a foundation for the follow-up research.