Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance: The role of creativity and managerial ties

This study draws on a comprehensive framework that integrates various social network theories to investigate how entrepreneurial orientation serves as a foundational factor influencing firm performance through an integrated moderated mediation mechanism. Specifically, it examines the critical roles of social networks and creativity. Entrepreneurial orientation positively impacts firm performance by fostering creativity, with business and political ties playing distinct buffering roles in the creativity development process. These network ties mediate and moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and creativity, ultimately enhancing firm performance. In a sample of 237 managers from the cultural and creative industries surveyed via a well-designed questionnaire, our findings reveal a significant relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and managerial creativity. Specifically, this relationship is moderated by managerial ties, such as business and political connections. Furthermore, it is not surprising that numerous business ties would facilitate creativity more; in addition, firm performance is mediated by creativity when obtained through more business ties. Another finding of this study is a negative and significant moderating relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and political ties and creativity, which, in turn, influences firm performance. We discuss how this intriguing pattern of moderated mediation could be explained using entrepreneurial orientation and social network theory as well as research on creativity.