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National Innovation Systems and Global Value Chain Participation: The Role of Entrepreneurship

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Abstract

The national innovation systems (NISs) literature has focused on institutional and industrial structures while overlooking creative individual agencies. This gap may leave unanswered the question of why some countries with weak institutional structures still improve global value chain (GVC) participation. This study, thus, investigates how national entrepreneurial dynamism impacts a country’s GVC participation as conditioned by other elements of NISs. The empirical results show that entrepreneurship is positively associated with GVC participation. Additionally, this positive relationship is stronger among countries with lower levels of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and smaller amounts of R&D employment. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship contributes to a country’s GVC participation and helps a country overcome its institutional weaknesses and, thus, achieve better globalization performance. Therefore, the study adds to NISs literature with creative individual agency, reveals the national internal avenue for GVC participation, and enriches the research on the NIS-GVC relationship.

Résumé

La littérature sur les systèmes nationaux d'innovation (SNI) s'est essentiellement penchée sur les structures institutionnelles et industrielles, tout en négligeant les agences de création individuelles. Cette lacune peut laisser sans réponse la question de savoir pourquoi certains pays, dont les structures institutionnelles sont faibles, parviennent encore à améliorer leur participation aux chaînes de valeur mondiales (CVM). Ainsi, cette étude examine l’impact du dynamisme entrepreneurial national sur la participation à la CVM au niveau d’un pays, sachant qu’elle est conditionnée par d’autres éléments des SNI. Les résultats empiriques montrent que l'entrepreneuriat est positivement associé à la participation aux CVM. En outre, cette relation positive est d’autant plus forte dans les pays ayant de faibles niveaux de protection des droits de propriété intellectuelle (DPI) et ayant moins d’emplois dans la recherche et développement (R&D). Les résultats suggèrent que l’esprit d’entreprise contribue à la participation d’un pays aux chaînes de valeur mondiales et aide ledit pays à surmonter ses faiblesses institutionnelles et à atteindre ainsi une meilleure performance dans le cadre de la mondialisation. Par conséquent, l'étude vient enrichir la littérature sur les SNI en se focalisant sur l’agence de création individuelle; elle révèle le cheminement interne, au niveau national, qui mène vers la participation aux CVM et enrichit la connaissance sur la relation entre SNI et CVM.

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Funding

This study was funded by University of San Francisco China Business Studies Initiative.

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  1. Lingnan College, Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 135 Xinggang West Road, Haizhu District, Guangzhou, 510275, Guangdong, China

    Zicheng Ma, Xin Zheng & Jianqi Zhang

  2. School of Management, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA, 94117, USA

    Liang Wang

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Ma, Z., Wang, L., Zheng, X. et al. National Innovation Systems and Global Value Chain Participation: The Role of Entrepreneurship. Eur J Dev Res 34, 897–920 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00405-0

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