Influence of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Open Innovation of Military-Civilian Integration Enterprises in China: The Mediating Effect of Organization Legitimacy

Abstract

Most research on open innovation focuses on innovation performance. However, few people have explored the driving factor of open innovation. This study is based on the entrepreneurial perspective, combined with the new institutional theory, taking 243 A-share listed military-civilian integration companies in China from 2016–2020. A multiple linear regression method is used to discuss the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises, and the mediating role of organizational legitimacy. The empirical research results show that: entrepreneurial orientation positively influences the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises; political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation; compared with the military-to-civilian enterprises, political relevance is more important to the civilian-to-military enterprises. The research findings can not only enrich the open innovation theory but also have an important guiding significance for the military-civilian integration technology innovation in China.

1. Introduction

Open innovation (OI) is defined as the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and to expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. The major motivation for open innovation is that it improves a firm’s ability to generate knowledge spillovers and create new products internally and in collaboration with external partners [1]. Open innovation has become a “key innovation strategy” [2] as small and large firms, start-ups, and incumbents promote open collaborative activities, deepening and broadening the portfolio of activities with innovation partners. In this respect, a particular research field on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) provides a theoretical lens to explain a firm’s strategic posture to exploit innovative ideas and experiments; anticipate and act on future changes in the environments; undertake investments with uncertain outcomes [3]. Entrepreneurial orientation, represented by a combination of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, has been theorized to contribute to firm growth, competitive advantage, and innovation performance [4]. In relative studies in the past, the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and innovation performance has been studied. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study that targets the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation.

Open innovation in the defense industry in China is a special context. The Chinese government hopes that military enterprises can strengthen collaborative innovation with civilian enterprises and break the technological innovation barriers. Especially, after military-civilian integration has been a national strategy since the eighteenth session of the Communist Party of China, the military-civilian integration innovation system is gradually taking shape. However, there are some barriers to military-civilian integration enterprises’ open innovation, such as the fundamental differences between the goals of military enterprises and the civilian sides. The military enterprises have a strong interest in maintaining control over access to its core technologies, and its tolerance for technology spillover is consequently limited. On the other hand, the civilian enterprises are highly sensitive to the costs of R&D, the costs of production, and other costs it faces. Hence, how to promote open innovation in military-civilian integration enterprises through entrepreneurial orientation is an urgent problem that needs to be solved.

Although the open innovation model has demonstrated substantial benefits to both product and process innovation, we still lack a clear understanding of the downsides of open innovation [5]. From a practical perspective, further research on the limitations of open innovation is more necessary than ever [6]. However, relatively little empirical research has investigated how to break through limitations to open innovation in the military-civilian integration context. Compared with ordinary enterprises, the open innovation in military-civilian integration enterprises has more limitations, which will be influenced by government policy and the market environment. Several authors have argued that the limitations of open innovation must be studied and discussed using the institutional perspective [7]. However, limited scholarly attention has been given to the role of organization legitimacy in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation in military-civilian integration enterprises.

In order to fill the gap in the available research, this research discusses the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises, and how to overcome limitations through organization legitimacy. The findings in this paper will not only enrich the open innovation theory, but also provide practical guidance for the collaborative innovation of military-civilian science and technology. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the literature review. Section 3 presents the research hypotheses. Section 4 and Section 5 describe the methods and empirical text and present the results of the empirical text. In Section 6, we discuss our conclusions, contribution, implications, and limitations.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Entrepreneurial Orientation

In the research of entrepreneurial companies, Miller [4] put forward the concept of entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation is usually regarded as a “strategic attitude”—with the purpose being to pursue a long-term development strategy through product updates, technological change, and new market entrance—and is also considered as having a tendency of updating the enterprise’s existing business areas and pursuing a new market opportunity. Presently, the three dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation widely accepted by academia are innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking [8,9]. Innovativeness refers to the pursuit of new products and services, which focuses on research and development activities in order to achieve the lead in technology. Proactiveness refers to the forward-looking behavior of identifying market opportunities before industry competitors can and launching new products into the market to seize market share [10]. Risk-taking refers to the tendency of enterprises to bear risk when taking advantage of potential market opportunities and innovation activities [11]. Entrepreneurial orientation is regarded as an important driving force of enterprise innovation and entrepreneurial behavior from all dimensions [12].

From the resource-based perspective, entrepreneurial orientation guides the strategic posture of enterprises in the management process by making rational use of resources, and optimizing the competitive strategy with competitors [13,14], to promote the enterprise to gain more benefits from the open innovation [15]. The research of Seo and Park [12] also showed that entrepreneurial orientation can realize the knowledge commercialization of the organization by encouraging open innovation. Yun et al. [16] effectively concluded that the entrepreneurial orientation of SMEs can positively moderate the relationship between open innovation and enterprise innovation performance. Yektadoost et al. [17] took pharmaceutical companies as a sample and found that the entrepreneurial orientation can promote the open innovation performance of high-cost, high-complexity, and high-risk enterprises. It can be seen from previous studies that entrepreneurial orientation always has a positive impact on open innovation, but most of them regard performance, and there are not too many discussions on the impact and mechanism of this innovation mode itself.

2.2. Open Innovation

Open innovation is based on the perspective of resource utilization [18], which is an innovative paradigm of integrating internal and external resources across organizational boundaries [19]. The primary goal of open innovation is to promote the development of enterprises through joint production and research and development, overcome technical barriers, and realize the transformation of achievements. Many scholars focus on the impact of open innovation on innovation performance, for example, Laursen and Salter [20]: by dividing open innovation into two dimensions, the breadth and depth, it is found that the relationship between open innovation and innovation performance is not linear but represents the inverted “U” curve relationship. Yang et al. [21] found that cooperative relationship is conducive to enterprises’ extensive use of external knowledge resources. However, the enterprises should prevent the excessive deepening of open depth for the reason that a path dependence will be formed and damage the innovation performance.

Some scholars have studied the particularity of open innovation in the field of the defense industry. For example, Ping [22] believed that the innovation resources and subjects of open innovation in the field of national defense should not be limited to the defense industry. The defense industry should pay more attention to external resources, take the innovation demand as the guidance, and strengthen the cooperation with the civilian sectors, to fully absorb and use the external knowledge and make up for some technological innovation defects. João et al. [23] found that the defense industry in China is very limited in knowledge production, whose demand for technology comes mainly from the civilian sectors. Hence, the innovation in the defense industry must be integrated with civilian sectors for the purpose of playing a better role. The open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises is exactly the integration of different innovation systems in the defense industry and civilian sectors. Xie et al. [24] believed that in the process of innovation and development, military-civilian integration enterprises should abandon the closed development idea and form an open innovative development model under certain conditions. Meanwhile, due to the uniqueness of military-civilian integration enterprises, Langlois et al. [25] pointed out that they should adopt dynamic open innovation strategies, and do a good job of confidentiality while obtaining external resources.

2.3. Organizational Legitimacy

Organizational legitimacy means that the activities of the organization must conform to the legal mechanism of the social system [26], which first comes from the new institutional theory. The new institutional theory emphasizes that the behavior of an organization is always constrained by the system, and obtaining legitimacy is the key to determine the survival of an organization [27,28]. From the perspective of resource acquisition, organizational legitimacy makes it easier for organizations to obtain innovative resources, which is conducive to its development [29,30]. Although the new institutional theory emphasizes that legitimacy lies in the convergence of organizations, it does not mean enterprises lose their initiative in the face of institutional constraints [31]; enterprises need to establish legitimacy according to their own wishes and needs. Ma et al. [32] found that entrepreneurial orientation can have a positive impact on the economic performance of enterprises through legitimacy. Zhang and White [33] also believed that ventures can build their legitimacy through entrepreneurial orientation and thereby overcome the challenges in internalizing critical knowledge acquired from external sources.

According to the new institutional theory and Guo et al. [34], organizational legitimacy includes two dimensions: political relevance and market legitimacy. Political relevance refers to acquiring government support and recognition by participating in politics or establishing contacts with officials who have political backgrounds [35], which is helpful to gain government subsidies or policy support for enterprise innovation. For example, Zhang et al. [36] found that political relevance had a positive impact on breakthrough innovation and progressive innovation. Market legitimacy refers to the behavior of the enterprises, which should comply with the behavior norms in the market, or the conventional tacit rules, and obtain the recognition of the market participants (customers, upstream and downstream enterprises, industry competitors, industry associations, etc.), which is helpful to grasp the latest trend in the market, seizes the opportunity of innovation, and promotes enterprise innovation [37]. Hu et al. [38] believed that improving the legitimacy of enterprises was conducive to encouraging their business model innovation. To sum up, organizational legitimacy exists between the emergence of entrepreneurial motivation and the implementation of innovation programs, which plays a crucial role in the innovation process.

3. Hypotheses and Theoretical Model

3.1. Entrepreneurial Orientation and Open Innovation

As a strategic driving factor, entrepreneurial orientation emphasizes the “innovation” behavior of enterprises, and the core is the “new entry,” mainly manifested in pursuing market opportunities. Therefore, the stronger the entrepreneurial orientation of the enterprise, the easier it is to increase the cooperative innovation demand of the enterprise. Enterprises can cooperate with multiple external parties through open innovation, lower the technical threshold, open the cooperation channels to solve their technical problems, and improve the innovation performance [39]. For enterprises, open innovation will stall without a unified strategy and clear goals [6,40]. Studies have shown that the stronger the entrepreneurial orientation in enterprises implementing open innovation, the more return of open innovation [12]. Cheng and Huizingh [41] believed that entrepreneurial orientation can help companies overcome some of the barriers to open innovation, such as integrating different but relevant knowledge networks between alliances and strengthening inter-organizational connections. Meanwhile, in terms of the three dimensions: innovativeness in entrepreneurial orientation is the key factor that drives enterprises to innovate and change their existing innovation model [42], and it can trigger enterprises to make open and innovative decisions; proactiveness helps enterprises to acquire, integrate, and use various types of resources, encourages enterprises to cooperate with various external parties, broadens the openness of enterprise cooperation, develops new markets, and enters new fields [43]; risk-taking determines the degree of openness in the open innovation of enterprises. The stronger the risk-bearing ability, the stronger the control ability of openness, which will inhibit the generation of opportunistic risks and redundant resource problems caused by the gradual increase in the openness of enterprises [41].

For the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises, military-to-civilian enterprises or civilian-to-military enterprises do not matter, which is a process of strategic transformation, and the result of this strategic transformation will be influenced by entrepreneurial orientation. For open innovation in military-to-civilian enterprises, entrepreneurial orientation encourages enterprises to expand the market through their volume and product advantages and transfer their high-level military production technology to the civilian market to obtain a particular market share [24]. For open innovation in civilian-to-military enterprises, entrepreneurial orientation encourages civilian-to-military enterprises to improve their technical level, integrate social resources, and reach cooperative relations with large national defense companies, to enter the military product field. Existing research also agrees that the development of military-civilian integration enterprises should not be limited to closed-door development, but needs to improve the openness of enterprises, and regards open innovation as an important strategy to obtain external resources [22,23,24]. Entrepreneurial orientation is exactly one of the important driving factors of open innovation.

Based on the above analysis, we propose the hypothesis:

H1. 

Entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises.

3.2. The Mediating Role of Organizational Legitimacy

For most enterprises, entrepreneurial orientation does not directly influence the open innovation. Enterprises need organizational legitimacy in the competitive environment to maintain their competitive advantage and carry out innovation activities [44]. Entrepreneurial orientation can be conducive to forming organizational legitimacy [45]. Existing research also supports this point: when enterprises enter a new field due to entrepreneurial orientation, they will face high legitimacy barriers compared with the existing enterprises in the field [46]. At the same time, the original legitimacy level of enterprises will be reduced [47]. However, as enterprises gradually take root in the new environment, entrepreneurial orientation constantly plays a role of innovation momentum and pioneering advantage in the new field, so enterprises can gradually establish a new organizational legitimacy and then affect the open innovation [34].

From the perspective of political relevance, military-to-civilian enterprises are mainly state-owned military enterprises with a solid political relevance. Objective data show that most senior leaders of military enterprises have worked in government agencies or are members of government power organizations. Such enterprises can be closer to the industry standards and norms formulated by the local government through a solid political connection, more easily obtaining the support and recognition from the government [48], which will make it easier for enterprises to access and mobilize fiscal resources (such as loans, tax relief, and research and development subsidies), policy information (such as market access and new project opportunities), and other exclusive resources [49], and ultimately promote open innovation. Compared with military-to-civilian enterprises, civilian-to-military enterprises do not have a natural advantage in this respect. Although some civilian-to-military enterprises have made great progress in civilian technological innovation, it will be a long and challenging process for those enterprises to enter the military market, and they need to invest a lot of money just in the pre-development phase of weapons. Hence, they need to obtain more political resources to support their open innovation.

From the perspective of market legitimacy, as “new entry” enterprises, military-civilian integration enterprises should not only abide by relevant industrial regulations but also meet the everyday demands of market entities. For example, in order to seize the opportunity of innovation [50], the enterprises need to be recognized by market participants and obtain the primary information in the market, such as the latest development trends involving technology and industry development trends. Most civilian enterprises enter the military industry through becoming suppliers or outsourcing factories of military enterprises. However, the military enterprises have strict standards for the selection of suppliers. Only when the civilian enterprises meet the requirements of military enterprises in product quality and reliability can they have the chance to become military suppliers. The same is true for military enterprises, whose products or technological innovations in the civil field will be competitive when they meet the requirements of the civil market. It can be seen that the advantage of market legitimacy lies in allowing enterprises to obtain the recognition of market participants in relevant industries, lowering the threshold of cooperation, accelerating the process of enterprise marketization, and promoting enterprises to carry out open innovation [51]. According to the existing research, entrepreneurial orientation can promote the formation of organizational legitimacy in the new environment, and political relevance and market legitimacy can also provide more support for the whole implementation process of open innovation; based on the above analysis, we make the following hypothesis:

H2a. 

Political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation.

H2b. 

Market legitimacy plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation.

In summary, the theoretical model of this paper is shown in Figure 1.

4. Methods

4.1. Data and Sample

This paper takes the listed companies in China in the A-share military-civilian integration sector as the empirical analysis object. As the development of military-civilian integration became the national strategy in 2015, the starting and ending period of the sample is 2016–2020. Before the hypothesis testing, the initial data are processed as follows: (1) eliminate ST, *ST, PT processing, and terminated listed enterprises; (2) eliminate the listed enterprises whose primary business does not belong to the military industry; (3) all continuous variables are given Winsorize processing at 1% to eliminate the influence of outliers and extreme values. Finally, 243 military-civilian integration listed enterprises are selected, with a total of 1119 groups of observation values. The original data used in this paper are from the National Intellectual Property Network, Oriental Wealth Network, and Ju Chao Information Network.

4.2. Measurement of Variables

4.2.1. Dependent Variable

Open Innovation (OI). It is difficult to collect the data around open innovation through the traditional questionnaire method for the reason of high secrecy in military-civilian integration enterprises. In order to measure open innovation, the text analysis method is used. The text analysis method can quickly count high-frequency vocabulary in the annual report around the connotation of open innovation, and more intuitively reflect the implicit, unknown, and valuable information of the enterprise.

First, by analyzing the open innovation approach of military-civilian integration enterprises, and thinking about the words that can reflect the open innovation of military-civilian integration, the following keywords are preliminarily formulated: military-civilian integration, openness, technological innovation, collaboration, cooperation, enterprise research and development, enterprise, university, research institute, integration, transformation, confidentiality, military industry, and weapons. After discussion with enterprises and the research team, “military-civilian integration, openness, technological innovation, collaboration, cooperation, enterprise research and development, integration and transformation” are finally determined as the keywords. Secondly, python is adopted to collect the annual reports of listed companies in the military-civilian integration sector from 2016 to 2020 on the website of Oriental Fortune, and they are converted into text format. Third, the Jieba library in python is employed to perform word segmentation, root identification, and to count all keyword frequencies. Finally, considering that the total word frequency of some annual reports is 0, 1 is added to the total word frequencies and the natural logarithm is taken, obtaining the open innovation indicator.

4.2.2. Independent Variables

Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO). Entrepreneurial orientation is considered a tendency to update the enterprise’s existing business areas and pursue new market opportunities, measured by internal R&D expenditure and external investment opportunities [52]. Therefore, this paper draws on Yang et al.’s [53] and Du’s [52] methods, through the proportion of R&D expenditure in sales revenue and the proportion of the net cash flow of annual investment activities in sales revenue to build a comprehensive index that can reflect the intensity of entrepreneurial orientation. The specific calculation method is as follows: First, ${\mathrm{RD}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents the R&D intensity of the i th enterprise in the t period in the two-dimensional probability space: the ratio of R&D expenditure to sales revenue. ${\mathrm{IF}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents the investment intensity of the i th enterprise in the t period in the two-dimensional probability space: the ratio of the net cash flow of investment activities to the sales revenue. Then, (${\mathrm{RD}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$, ${\mathrm{IF}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$) reflects the entrepreneurial orientation of the i th enterprise in the t period in the two-dimensional probability space. Second, to calculate the Euclidean distance of the entrepreneurial orientation of the i th enterprise in the t period from the origin (0,0), the formula is: ${\mathrm{EO}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}=\sqrt{{({\mathrm{RD}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}-0)}^2+{\left({\mathrm{IF}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}-0\right)}^2}$. Among them, the farther the ${\mathrm{EO}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ is from the origin (0,0), the larger the value, the greater the intensity of the entrepreneurial orientation, and the more positive the behavior of the enterprises. On the contrary, the closer the origin (0,0), the smaller the value, the smaller the intensity of the entrepreneurial orientation, and the more conservative the behavior of the enterprises. By observing the Euclidean distance, we pay more attention to the entrepreneurial orientation further away from (0,0) [54].

4.2.3. Mediating Variables

Political Relevance (PR). According to Xu’s [55] judgment criteria: if the chairman or general manager of the enterprise was or is now a government official, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, or a member of the CPPCC, the value is 1. Otherwise, it will be 0.

Market Legitimacy (ML). The market legitimacy of each enterprise is measured according to the China Province Market Index Report (2021) [56]. Due to the lack of data in 2020, this paper calculates the 2020 market index based on the average growth rate of the market index from 2016 to 2019.

4.2.4. Control Variables

The control variables include: (1) Ownership concentration (EC). The ownership concentration degree of an enterprise has an important impact on the daily operation and the decision-making of significant matters, which is measured by the shareholding proportion of the top ten shareholders. (2) Asset–liability ratio (Lev). The asset–liability ratio can represent the solvency of an enterprise, which can be represented by the ratio of net asset value and total indebtedness. (3) Enterprise scale (Size). The size of an enterprise is related to resource input and innovation ability, thus influencing the innovation performance of the enterprise. The measurement of enterprise size is the logarithm of the number of enterprise employees. (4) Listing years (Year). The listing of an enterprise means the further increased openness and a higher resource absorption ability, which plays a vital role in promoting open innovation. The measurement of listing year is the time for enterprises to be listed. (5) Enterprise type (Type). For the military-civilian integration enterprises, there is a large difference between the state-owned and private enterprises in the policy preference and the subsidy input, which will directly influence the innovation performance. If the enterprise is state-owned, this variable is 1. If the enterprise is private, this variable is 0. The defifinition and measurement of the dependent variables, independent variables, mediating variables, and control variables involved in this section are shown in

Table 1. The Measures of Variables.

Term	Variable	Distribution	Code
Dependent variable	Open innovation	The logarithm of the total word frequency	OI
Independent variable	Entrepreneurial orientation	See the formula in the paper	EO
Mediating variables	Political relevance	The chairman or general manager of the enterprise was or is now a government official, or a deputy to the National People’s Congress, or a member of the CPPCC; the value is 1. Otherwise, it is 0.	PR
	Market legitimacy	The market index	ML
Control variables	Ownership concentration	The share proportion of the top ten shareholders	EC
	Asset–liability ratio	Net asset value/total indebtedness	Lev
	Enterprise scale	The logarithm of the number of enterprise employees	Size
	Listing years	Listing years	Year
	Enterprise type	State-owned enterprises take 1; Private enterprises take 0.	Type

.

4.3. Model Construction

In order to analyze the influence of open innovation on entrepreneurial orientation and verify the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy between the two, this paper constructs the following model by referring to the mediating effect testing procedure proposed by Wen and Ye [57]:

$$O{I}_{i,t}={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_{1}E{O}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_n{{\displaystyle \sum }}^{ }Contro{l}_{i,t}+{\epsilon }_{i,t}$$

(1)

$$P{R}_{i,t}={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_{1}E{O}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_n{{\displaystyle \sum }}^{ }Contro{l}_{i,t}+{\epsilon }_{i,t}$$

(2)

$$O{I}_{i,t}={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_{1}E{O}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_{2}P{R}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_n{{\displaystyle \sum }}^{ }Contro{l}_{i,t}+{\epsilon }_{i,t}$$

(3)

$$M{L}_{i,t}={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_{1}E{O}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_n{{\displaystyle \sum }}^{ }Contro{l}_{i,t}+{\epsilon }_{i,t}$$

(4)

$$O{I}_{i,t}={\alpha }_0+{\alpha }_{1}E{O}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_{3}M{L}_{i,t}+{\alpha }_n{{\displaystyle \sum }}^{ }Contro{l}_{i,t}+{\epsilon }_{i,t}$$

(5)

Among them, ${ \mathrm{OI}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents open innovation, ${\mathrm{EO}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents entrepreneurial orientation, ${\mathrm{PR}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents political relevance, ${\mathrm{ML}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents market legitimacy, ${\mathrm{Control}}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ represents the control variable, and ${\mathsf{\epsilon }}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{t}}$ is the random disturbance term. Model 1 can test hypothesis H1, and models 2 to model 5 can be combined with model 1 to test hypotheses H2a and H2b.

5. The Empirical Test and Results

5.1. Descriptive Statistics

Table 2. Descriptive statistics.

Variable	Mean	Std. Dev.	Max	Min	Obs
OI	1.506	0.217	2	0.954	1119
EO	0.202	0.296	4.275	0.006	1119
PR	0.253	0.435	1	0	1119
ML	6.795	0.950	8.510	3.510	1119
EC	0.567	0.144	0.884	0.260	1119
Lev	0.385	0.172	0.832	0.073	1119
Size	3.306	0.486	4.547	2.243	1119
Year	8.853	6.243	25	0	1119
Type	0.340	0.474	1	0	1119

presents the descriptive statistics for each variable. The maximum value of the entrepreneurial orientation is 4.275, and the minimum value is 0.006, which means that the entrepreneurial orientation of the sample enterprises is quite different; the average asset–liability ratio is 0.567, which means that the solvency ability of the sample enterprises is strong. The average enterprise type is 0.34, which means that there are more private enterprises in the sample enterprises. The multicollinearity is analyzed through calculating the variance inflation factor (VIF). The average VIF value is 1.45, and the maximum value is 2.02, which means that there is no serious multicollinearity among the variables.

5.2. Correlation Coefficient Test

Table 3. Correlations.

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. OI	1
2. EO	0.038 *	1
3. PR	0.081 ***	−0.128 ***	1
4. ML	0.043	−0.040	−0.082 ***	1
5. EC	−0.041	0.119 ***	−0.068 **	0.047	1
6. Lev	0.040	0.088 *	0.272 ***	−0.148 ***	−0.148 ***	1
7. Size	0.088 ***	−0.234 ***	0.237 ***	−0.018	−0.133 ***	0.521 ***	1
8. Year	−0.026	−0.269 ***	0.138 ***	−0.150 ***	−0.398 ***	0.365 ***	0.523 ***	1
9. Type	−0.054 *	−0.173 ***	0.282 ***	−0.253 ***	0.041	0.257 ***	0.380 ***	0.456 ***

Note: *, **, and *** indicate that the significance levels are 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively.

shows the correlation coefficient between each variable. There is a significant positive correlation between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation, and a significant negative correlation between political relevance and entrepreneurial orientation, which preliminarily confirms the research hypothesis proposed in this paper.

5.3. Hypothesis Testing

To further explore the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation and verify the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy between the two, this paper adopts the three-step test of the mediating effect, and the results are shown in

Table 4. Direct effect and mediating-effect tests.

Variable	OI		PR	ML	OI
	M1	M2	M3	M4	M5	M6
EO		0.038 *	−0.096 **	−0.283 ***	0.043 **	0.039 *
PR					0.046 ***
ML						0.004
EC	−0.007	−0.079	−0.345	0.425 **	−0.406	−0.081
Lev	0.078 *	0.085 *	0.048	0.829 ***	−0.083 *	0.082 *
Size	−0.055 ***	−0.050 ***	0.154 ***	0.116	−0.304 ***	0.049 ***
Year	−0.033 **	−0.003 *	−0.010 ***	−0.175 ***	−0.002	−0.002 *
Type	−0.339 **	−0.030 *	0.249 ***	−0.580 ***	−0.041 **	−0.027
Constant	1.376 ***	1.380 ***	−0.058	6.260 ***	1.383 ***	1.354 ***
R-squared	0.023	0.022	0.116	0.112	0.030	0.023
F-values	5.090	4.120	23.630	22.750	4.760	3.570

Note: *, **, and *** indicate that the significance levels are 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively.

. The results of M2 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is positively significant (α1 = 0.038, p < 0.1), and H1 is supported.

The results of M3 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on political relevance is negatively significant (α1 = −0.096, p < 0.05). The results of M5 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is positively significant (α1 = 0.043, p < 0.05), and the regression coefficient of political relevance on open innovation is positively significant (α2 = 0.046, p < 0.01). The results of M2 and M5 show that after the mediating variable of political relevance is added, the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is increased from α1 = 0.038 (p < 0.1) to α1 = 0.043 (p < 0.05), which means that the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation is mediated by political relevance, and H2a is supported. The results of M6 show that the regression coefficient of market legitimacy on open innovation is not significant, and H2b is not supported.

To further test the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy, we use the bootstrap method, setting the sample size to 5000 and the confidence interval to 95%. The results shown in

Table 5. Results of the bootstrap mediation test.

Variable	Mediating Effect	Effect	Boot SE	Boot LLCI	Boot ULCI
PR	Indirect effect	−0.004	0.002	−0.0087	−0.0001
	Direct effect	0.304	0.022	−0.001	0.086
ML	Indirect effect	−0.001	0.002	−0.005	0.003
	Direct effect	0.039	0.022	−0.004	0.082

indicate that the 95% confidence interval of political relevance is (−0.0087, −0.0001) and excludes zero, which means that political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation; H2a is supported. The 95% confidence interval of market legitimacy is (−0.005, 0.003) and includes zero, which means that market legitimacy does not play a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation; H2b is not supported.

5.4. Heterogeneity Analysis

Military-civilian integration enterprises are mainly divided into two types: “Military-to-civilian enterprises” and “Civilian-to-military enterprises”. In order to further analyze the impact of open innovation on entrepreneurial orientation and the mediating role of organizational legitimacy in the two types of enterprises, heterogeneity analysis is carried out. As shown in

Table 6. Heterogeneity Analysis.

Variable	Military-to-Civilian
	OI	PR	ML	OI
	M7	M8	M9	M10	M11
EO	−0.018	−0.066	−0.287	−0.201	−0.002
PR				0.078 **
ML					0.051 ***
EC	0.124	−0.997 ***	0.073	0.202	0.123
Lev	−0.074	0.238	0.609	−0.093	−0.111
Size	0.132 ***	0.119	0.019	0.123 ***	0.131 ***
Year	−0.400	−0.901 ***	−0.013	−0.002	−0.003
Type	−0.102 *	0.137	−0.048	−0.113 **	−0.102 **
Constant	1.114 ***	0.530 *	6.276 ***	1.073 ***	0.789 ***
R-squared	0.074	0.078	0.030	0.098	0.118
F-values	2.680	2.880	1.060	3.130	3.840
Variable	Civilian-to-Military
	Open	PC	ML	Open
	M12	M13	M14	M15	M16
EO	0.059 **	−0.114 **	−0.222 *	0.064 **	0.058 **
PR				0.044 **
ML					−0.006
OC	−0.111 *	−0.161	0.467 **	−0.104 *	−0.108 *
Lev	0.081	0.014	0.802 ***	0.081	0.087 *
Size	0.030	0.173 ***	0.165 *	0.022	0.031
Year	−0.002	−0.006 **	−0.018 **	−0.002	−0.002
Type	−0.025	0.304 ***	−0.551 ***	−0.038 *	−0.028
Constant	1.456 ***	−0.239 *	6.097 ***	1.467 ***	1.495 ***
R-squared	0.018	0.144	0.096	0.023	0.018
F-values	2.590	24.400	15.320	2.970	2.300

Note: *, **, and *** indicate that the significance levels are 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively.

, as for military-to-civilian enterprises, the results of M7, M8, and M9 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is not significant, the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on political relevance is not significant, and the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on market legitimacy is not significant. Hence, organizational legitimacy does not play a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation. As for civilian-to-military enterprises, the results of M12 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is positively significant (α1 = 0.059, p < 0.05). The results of M13 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on political relevance is negatively significant (α1 = −0.114, p < 0.05). The results of M15 show that the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation is positively significant (α1 = 0.064, p < 0.05), and the regression coefficient of political relevance on open innovation is positively significant (α2 = 0.078, p < 0.05). The results of M12 and M15 show that after the mediating variable of political relevance is added, the regression coefficient of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation increases from α1 = 0.059 (p < 0.05) to α1 = 0.064 (p < 0.05), which means that the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation is mediated by political relevance. The results of M16 show that the regression coefficient of market legitimacy on open innovation is not significant. Hence, the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation is not mediated by market legitimacy.

To further test the mediating effect of organizational legitimacy in heterogeneity analysis, we still use the bootstrap method. The results shown in

Table 7. Results of the bootstrap mediation test (Heterogeneity Analysis).

	Variable	Mediating Effect	Effect	Boot SE	Boot LLCI	Boot ULCI
Military-to-civilian	PR	Indirect effect	−0.005	0.008	−0.022	0.011
		Direct effect	−0.012	0.060	−0.128	0.105
	ML	Indirect effect	−0.014	0.015	−0.043	0.015
		Direct effect	−0.003	0.058	−0.116	0.111
Civilian-to-military	PR	Indirect effect	−0.005	0.003	−0.013	−0.001
		Direct effect	0.046	0.003	−0.007	0.122
	ML	Indirect effect	0.001	0.002	−0.004	0.008
		Direct effect	0.057	0.028	0.002	0.113

indicate that the 95% confidence interval of political relevance is (−0.022, 0.011) and the 95% confidence interval of market legitimacy is (−0.043, 0.015), all including zero, which means that political relevance and market legitimacy do not play a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation in military-to-civilian enterprises. The 95% confidence interval of political relevance is (−0.013, −0.001), excluding zero, and the 95% confidence interval of market legitimacy is (−0.004, 0.008), including zero, which means that political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation in civilian-to-military enterprises.

6. Discussion and Conclusions

6.1. Research Conclusions

Based on the entrepreneurial perspective, combined with the new institutional theory, this study analyzed the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, organizational legitimacy, and open innovation. The main conclusions of this study are presented below. (1) Entrepreneurial orientation positively affects the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises. Entrepreneurial orientation can not only drive enterprises to make product innovation and guide enterprises to occupy market share in a new field, but can also prevent enterprises from knowledge leakage, capital shortage, and other risks. Therefore, entrepreneurial orientation is one of the effective factors in promoting military-civilian integration enterprises’ open innovation. (2) Political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation. When the entrepreneurship orientation of enterprises is gradually enhanced, enterprises are driven to innovate in new fields. In this process, the original political relevance of enterprises is weakened. After a period of time, the enterprises will gradually become familiar with the development law of the new fields and then establish new political relevance, which will promote open innovation. Therefore, political relevance plays a mediating role in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation. (3) Compared with military-to-civilian enterprises, political relevance is more important for civilian-to-military enterprises. Most of the military-to-civilian enterprises are state-owned military enterprises, which have been established for a long time, can gain the government policy priority easily, and integrate internal and external resources. They already have a high intensity of political relevance and market legitimacy for themselves. However, most civilian-to-military enterprises are private enterprises, characterized by short establishment time, a high threshold for joining the military, and weak political relevance. Therefore, it is necessary to integrate local political resources and obtain government subsidies and support through specific political relevance to promote the enterprises’ open innovation.

6.2. Theoretical Contribution

Our research is mainly concerned with two theoretical contributions. First, entrepreneurial orientation is one important driving force of open innovation. Open innovation is considered as an innovation paradigm formed by organizations when integrating internal and external resources [58]. After Chesbrough [19] proposed the concept of open innovation, scholars’ research mostly focused on its impact on performance [59,60], but few studies have discussed the formation mechanism of open innovation. Corporate innovation does not occur overnight and leads us to think about the driving force of open innovation. Through empirical analysis, it is found that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive impact on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises. This conclusion enriches the relationship between entrepreneurial theory and open innovation, and also makes up for the gap in the existing formation mechanism of open innovation. Second, in view of the limitations of open innovation in military-civilian integration enterprises, enhancing organization legitimacy is one breakthrough method. The new institutional theory is mostly applied to the sustainable development of enterprises in previous studies [61]; this paper focuses on the limitations of the open innovation of enterprises; the new institutional theory can provide a new perspective for breaking through the limitations. Through the analysis, it is found that the political relevance in the organizational legitimacy has a mediating effect between entrepreneurial orientation and open innovation; this result not only enriches the application scenario and action mechanism of the new institutional theory, but also provides a reliable path for the military-civilian integration enterprises to better carry out open innovation.

6.3. Practical Implications

This study has certain guiding significance for how to better promote open innovation in military-civilian integration enterprises.

First, enterprises should recognize that entrepreneurial orientation contributes to the implementation of open innovation. Therefore, they should enhance their own entrepreneurial orientation. For managers, they should improve entrepreneurial thinking and cultivating entrepreneurial awareness. Enterprises should often investigate the market environment, look for development opportunities, and take immediate actions to exploit the new market. At the same time, they should improve their innovation ability and improve their ability to resist risks; these actions will contribute to entrepreneurial orientation. Second, enterprises should enhance their own political relevance in order to improve open innovation. Especially for the civilian-to-military enterprises, the political relevance can be improved by choosing the institutionalized political embedding, such as joining the government-led federation of industry and commerce and enterprise association, etc., and the enterprises can also choose to employ political figures to establish the political relevance.

6.4. Limitations and Directions for Future Research

This study explored the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises, and the mediating role of organizational legitimacy, but it has limitations. First, in this study, an empirical analysis was conducted based on data from China. However, the research sample did not consider military-civilian integration enterprises in other countries. Future studies can collect data from other countries to conduct analyses to improve the generalizability of the conclusions. Second, this paper only discussed the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises from the perspective of organizational legitimacy. It did not consider the role of moderating variables such as absorption ability, public subsidy, or research input. Future studies can add moderating variables to analyze whether it will affect the variables of different paths. Third, entrepreneurial orientation included three dimensions: innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking; future studies can analyze the relationship between the open innovation of military-civilian integration enterprises from the three dimensions.