Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation Performance in New Ventures: Examining the Roles of Strategic Flexibility and Environmental Turbulence

Abstract

Abstract This study seeks to disclose the influencing mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership on innovation performance in new ventures. Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we construct a mediation model to examine the mechanism through which entrepreneurial leadership affects innovation performance of new ventures via strategic flexibility. To obtain an in-depth understanding of the mediating mechanism, this study argues that environmental turbulence could be considered as the moderating variable. Our hypotheses are tested on a sample of 175 Chinese high-tech new ventures. The results show that strategic flexibility mediates the association between entrepreneurial leadership and innovation performance. However, the results only support the moderation of technological turbulence on the association between entrepreneurial leadership and strategic flexibility. Our findings extend the entrepreneurship and leadership research by investigating how entrepreneurial leadership affects innovation performance of new ventures via strategic flexibility, and the effectiveness of entrepreneurial leadership under technological turbulence.