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 struc-
tures still improve global value chain (GVC) participation. This study, thus, investi-
gates how national entrepreneurial dynamism impacts a country’s GVC participation
as conditioned by other elements of NISs. The empirical results show that entrepre-
neurship 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 fndings sug-
gest 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.
By
Liang Wang, Zicheng Ma, Xin Zheng, Jianqi Zhang