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Impact on the survival and development of small and medium-sized enterprises in China

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Abstract

With fierce market competition, for medium and small scaled businesses the innovation of the business model is meant as a significant method to obtain competitive benefits and improve performance. This paper takes Confucian culture as the guidance and innovatively takes Guanxi as the starting point to construct a theoretical model of “Guanxi Orientation—resource acquisition—business model innovation—SMEs’ performance”. On this basis, based on the data of 405 samples, using the linear regression analysis method, the bootstrapping test method, and other methods to understand the Guanxi orientation’s intermediary mechanism on the execution of SMEs, and analyze the chain intermediary effect of resource acquisition and innovation of business model and the environment the moderating impact of turbulence. Descriptive statistics are used for questionnaire results and for the interviewees to have an in-depth conversation. The study uses a structural model, mediation, and moderation analysis for the results. The research outcomes firmly established that a pronounced Guanxi orientation positively impacts the performance of SMEs. Moreover, the investigation uncovered that resource acquisition and business model innovation act as intricate and multifaceted mediators in the relationship between Guanxi inclination and the performance of SMEs. The current study puts forward reasonable suggestions for SMEs to achieve business model innovation and performance improvement from the perspective of Guanxi along with researching the antecedents and processes driving novelty in commercial operations and SMEs’ performance in the context of Chinese culture.

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The dataset generated and analyzed in the current study can be obtained from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This work was supported by Xichang University Doctoral Research Startup Project (grant number: YBS202211).

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  1. School of Economics and Management, Xichang University, Xichang, China

    Wei Yang & Mingning Lu

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  1. Wei Yang
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WY authors agreed on the content of the study. WY and ML collected all the data for analysis. ML agreed on the methodology. WY and ML completed the analysis based on agreed steps. Results and conclusions are discussed and written together. The author read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mingning Lu.

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Yang, W., Lu, M. Impact on the survival and development of small and medium-sized enterprises in China. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05645-x

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