key: cord-0877855-yaqtlrbe
authors: Jiao, Jian-ling; Zhang, Xiao-lan; Tang, Yun-shu
title: What factors determine the survival of green innovative enterprises in China? - A method based on fsQCA
date: 2020-07-09
journal: Technol Soc
DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101314
sha: 02eb6777550d41e210141dd161a4814b42f6ab52
doc_id: 877855
cord_uid: yaqtlrbe

Increasingly serious environmental problems have generated a large number of small and medium-sized green innovative enterprises. Against the background of rapid technological changes and increasingly fierce market competition, survival is the main problem faced by these enterprises. Exploring the mechanisms and core elements that determine the survival of green innovation enterprises is of great practical significance for improving the survival probability of green innovation enterprises and achieving environmental improvement through green innovation. In this paper, 29 enterprises that have won the title of “Top 10 Green Innovative Enterprises” in China are considered the research objects, and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method is used to examine the path combinations that affect the survival of enterprises from the perspectives of resource-based and dynamic capabilities. The findings are as follows. First, government support is key to the survival of green innovative enterprises; second, China's green innovative enterprises have a research and development dilemma, and only matching high R&D capacity with product competitiveness can enhance their survival capabilities; and third, the lack of resource base capacity is the key factor affecting the failure of green enterprises, and dynamic capacity is the key factor for the survival of green innovative enterprises. The main contribution of this paper to the field of management is that enterprises must always pay attention to the coordinated development of internal resource-based capability and external dynamic capability. Conversely, the Chinese government should provide high R&D support to enterprises with competitive products so that these enterprises can rapidly grow into leading enterprises through continuous innovation and drive the sustained and rapid development of China's green innovation industry.

Keywords: Green innovation enterprise survival, Resource-based view, Dynamic capability 1 view, fsQCA method. 2 3 1 Introduction various details of the internal and external resources of the enterprise, but it has not described the 1 overall configuration that affects the ability of the enterprise to survive. Enterprise survival 2 research is a complexity theory problem. The relationship between the research variables could be 3 nonlinear, or it could suddenly switch, so the same reason could have different effects in specific 4 situations (Woodside 2014). For example, when Hui used the Cox proportional hazard model to 5 study the survival of Chinese manufacturing enterprises, it was found that the government subsidy 6 had no significant effect on the survival of enterprises (Hui, Peng et al. 2016 ). The same was true 7 for a sample of Chinese manufacturing companies, but the results were mutually exclusive with 8 the results of Zheng's research above, mainly because the complexity of enterprise survival 9

research determines that the same variable can lead to enterprise survival or death in different 10

Our research is based on the existing survival research literature and summarizes the factors 12 that affect a company's viability mainly from two aspects: resources and capabilities. Resources 13 are internal elements that companies already possess that can bring core competitiveness to the 14 company, such as human capital, R&D capital, and product competitiveness, while capability 15 refers to the integration and reconstruction that help companies to obtain external connections and 16 break environmental constraints, for example, cooperative R&D in universities and government 17 support. The resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability view (DCV) form the 18 theoretical framework of this paper; that is, advanced resources including intangible resources and 19 capabilities can bring excellent performance to an enterprise (Singh, Chen et al. 2019 ). Therefore, 20 this article expands from the two dimensions of the RBV and DCV (internal resource integration 21 and external resource utilization of the enterprise), attempting to construct a comprehensive and 22 complete configuration of the factors influencing the survival of an enterprise and analyzing each 1

Product competitiveness positively affects the survival of enterprises. Markey-Towler 1 believed that, for enterprises, especially innovative enterprises, it is not sufficient to obtain a fairly 2 high-quality product at a reasonable price, and only a relative price advantage can protect an Storey 14 and Wynarczyk were earlier scholars who studied the relationship between talent reserves and 15 enterprise survival. Their study found that talent reserves have a significant impact on the survival 16 of modern manufacturing companies (Storey and Wynarczyk 1996) . Chiappetta Jabbour discussed 17 the relationship between green human resources and corporate sustainable development showed that the synergy produced by the talent reserve can improve the survival rate of innovative 1 companies (Yang, Bossink et al. 2017 ). 2 3 The dynamic capability view (DVC) is the ability of an enterprise to integrate, build, and 4 reorganize internal and external capabilities to adapt to changing market conditions (Teece, Pisano 5 et al. 1997) . As an extension of the resource-based capability view, the focus of dynamic 6 capabilities is on the examination of external uncertain environments. The theory states that 7 companies must constantly adapt to the rapidly changing external environment to obtain lasting 8 competitive advantages. (Scott, L. et al. 2005 ). To survive and prosper in a changing environment, 9

companies must develop dynamic capabilities to create, expand, and change the way in which they 10 make a living. Scholars have studied the relationship between dynamic capabilities and corporate 11 performance under the influence of environmental uncertainty. Oke's research results showed that 12 environmental uncertainty actively alleviates the relationship between the execution of innovation 13 strategies and innovation performance and also proved that environmental uncertainty can enhance 14 corporate income growth (Oke, Walumbwa et al. 2012 ). Mikalef used the method of fsQCA to 15 explore the relationship between information technology-supported dynamic capabilities and 16

competitive performance under different degrees of environmental uncertainty, and the results of 17 path configuration showed that, from relatively stable environments to highly uncertain 18 environment conditions, the dynamic capabilities supported by information technology can be 19 used to improve the organization's competitive performance (Mikalef and Pateli 2017) . 20 capabilities are no longer abstract and can be interpreted from multiple dimensions. This article 1 summarizes the characteristics of dynamic capabilities and understands them as the ability of 2 enterprises to integrate, learn and reconstruct resources in three dimensions (Barreto 2010) . 3

Bellucci believed that dynamic capabilities are the abilities of enterprises for product development, 4 alliance and strategic decision making. The cooperation between enterprises and universities will 5 help to improve the organizational learning ability (Bellucci, Pennacchio et al. 2016 ); In addition, 6 the company's access to government support will be conducive to the improvement of resource 7 integration capabilities and thus affect the company's competitiveness (Shivraj, Kanungo et al. 8 2011) . Huang believed that the ability of high-tech companies to develop and introduce new 9 processes or technologies can help organizations to use dynamic capabilities to build core 10 competitiveness, so technology introduction can be regarded as the main factor restructuring the 11 capability dimension (Huang, Wu et al. 2012) . 12

Smith explored the impact of government high-tech program subsidies (ATP) on the survival 13 rate of start-up companies. The research results show that ATP rewards can effectively improve the 14 survival rate of companies (Smith, Feldman et al. 2018 ). Hanifah's research on SMEs in Malaysia 15 found that government support plays an important role in the innovation performance of spending is not only reflected in financial support but also in support from government orders and 19 government publicity, increasing the survival rate of enterprises (He and Yang 2016) . The 20 cooperation between schools and enterprises under the industry-university-research paradigm is 21 conducive to the complementarity of resources and capabilities, thereby having an important, 22 positive impact on the survival of enterprises, especially startups. Technology introduction can 1 quickly make up for the shortcomings of a company's lack of technology and capabilities. Wagner 2 explored whether there is a significant, positive correlation between the survival of the enterprise 3 and the two-way transaction of technology introduction and output. It was found that technology 4 introduction is much more efficient than technology output in affecting the survival of enterprises 5 (Wagner 2013). 6

In summary, the existing survival studies have mainly been aimed at general enterprises, and research is a typical complexity theory problem, which is suitable for in-depth analysis and 20 research using the configuration method offered by complexity theory. Specifically, we use the 1 fsQCA method to conduct green innovation enterprise survival research for the following reasons. 2

First, the fsQCA method compensates for key aspects of the case study method by obtaining 3 high-precision descriptions of real-world processes. This method is unique in that it can be greatly 4 We have no way of achieving the ultimate in every aspect, and it is the same in reality. Successful 13 large enterprises are not all inclusive, so to make full use of their own advantages with limited 14 resources to improve the survivability of the enterprise, the way to use fsQCA is to help us to 15 break the thinking limitations in this situation, combine the company's own situation, and reduce 16 the survival dilemma of the company, all of which are very meaningful in theory and reality. 17

Second, the symmetric research method of regression analysis makes it difficult to explain 18 the causal asymmetry problem in complexity theory, which is also an important reason for us to characteristics (such as low prices or unique products), companies can survive, but this assumption 6

is not the case. The same factor can lead to the survival of the enterprise or the death of the 7 enterprise, and the key depends on how this factor is configured. 8

It is precisely because the reality of business survival is complex that a single factor can lead 9

to enterprise survival with high probability, but it is difficult to describe the real situation of 10 enterprise survival. To portray the situation of enterprise survival and death as realistically as 11 possible, we use the fsQCA method to attempt to extract the necessary path for enterprise survival 12 from complexity theory to draw from theories and insights that are different from those of 13 previous studies. issue, 50 award-winning enterprises were selected as the sample cases, the time period of which 20 ran from 2011 to 2015. On the one hand, the selection criteria of cases should consider whether the previous literature has fully discussed the variables involved to ensure that the selection of 1 cases is scientific and reasonable; on the other hand, the selection of cases should ensure its 2 internal consistency; that is, all the selected cases involve the same conditional variables to 3 facilitate comparative analysis. Specifically, case screening follows the following criteria. 4

(1) Delete the energy saving transformation case of traditional enterprises. The research 5 subject of this paper is the sustainability of newly created green innovative enterprises, and the 6 transformation of traditional enterprises does not meet the research requirements. 7

(2) Delete enterprises that do not create green products as their main products. Some 8 award-winning enterprises are group companies, and green innovative products are only a small 9 branch of the enterprise layout, the survival of which is not comparable with other small and 10 medium-sized enterprises in the case. 11

(3) Deleting information is not sufficient to support the case of condition variables. 12

Finally, 29 green innovative enterprises were selected, among which 7 died, and 22 survived. 13

The number of employees of the above enterprises was less than 1,000, and the total assets were 14 less than 40,000,000 yuan, all belonging to the category of small and medium-sized enterprises. 15

The value of each variable of the case was based on the information provided by the "International 16

Finance" of the award-winning enterprise report, as well as Xinhua net, NetEase, the official 17 website of the enterprise and other network media. 18 System (http://www.gsxt.gov.cn/index.html) shows that the enterprise is in existence; if the 2 business dies, it is removed. Because not all dead enterprises will choose to cancel the enterprise 3 immediately, this paper assumes that enterprise death includes two situations: one is the 4 enterprise's self-cancellation; and the other is that the enterprise's legal person is included in the 5 list of breachers of trust, and the enterprise has multiple operating risks, such as contract disputes, 6 pledge of chattel, freezing of deposits, judicial auction, etc. Accordingly, the value distribution of 7 the result variable of the case is shown in Table 1 10 After reviewing the literature, this paper shows that the conditional variables that affect the 11 survival of green innovative enterprises mainly come from internal and external enterprises. The environment of reality also shows that the death of any enterprise is the result of the combined 17 effects of internal and external factors, and the complete picture of the facts cannot be obtained from a single dimension. Therefore, this paper considers two internal and external dimensions and 1 9 conditional variables to study their specific impacts on the survival and death of enterprises. 2 Table 2 shows the coding rules and literature sources of the study variables, from which it can be 3 seen that enterprise survival is affected by all 9 variables, while enterprise death is not affected by 4 talent reserve, ownership or patents number. 5 Government Support (GS): Government support refers to a series of supportive behaviors of 2 the government to enterprises, listed as the following: enterprises participating in national 3 demonstration projects and the "863" program; and national awards, such as technological 4 innovation awards. Previous studies have shown that the closer that a firm's relationship with the 5 government is, the stronger that its ability is to innovate, firms with government support are likely 6 to survive longer. Therefore, we code the cases in which there is government support as 1 and the 7 cases in which there is no government support as 0. The product has the economic benefit → code 1

The product has environmental benefit → code 0

Markey-Towler (2016) Sustainable Innovation

Technology Introduction (TI). Green innovation, mostly for technical leading enterprises, is 1 the source of the core technology for independent research and development or is imported from 2 abroad and has an important influence on an enterprise's viability. Previous studies have shown 3 that improving the company's ability to adapt to green business, seeking long-term investment and 4

improving the level of technology are important measures to avoid the failure of green innovation 5 enterprises. Therefore, this paper assumes that enterprises with technology introduction are more 6 likely to survive in the fierce market competition environment, so enterprises with existing 7 technology introduction are coded as 1, while none existing enterprises are coded as 0. closely related to the survival of enterprises. Therefore, in this paper, enterprises with annual 19 revenue more than 5% for R&D input are regarded as high R&D input enterprises with codes of 1, 20 while those with revenues less than 5% are 0. improvement of technology type and patent number could improve the survival rate of Chinese 1 high-tech enterprises, this paper cites patent number as a conditional variable (Colombelli and 2

Quatraro 2019). This variable is treated with a fuzzy set. The membership classification refers to 3

Woodside, Nagy and Megehee (Woodside, Nagy et al. 2018 ). Membership in a fuzzy set is treated 4 as 5%, 50% and 95%. 5

Enterprise Ownership (EO): This paper assumes that state-owned enterprises have more 6 resources to extend their viability, so it encodes state-owned enterprises as 1 and private 7 enterprises as 0. 8

Product Competition (PC): This paper divides product competitiveness into economic 9

benefits and environmental benefits. We assume that that all products produced by green 10 innovative enterprises have certain environmental benefits, but on the basis of these benefits, if 11 they still have price advantages in market competition with alternative products, then they are 12 classified as economic benefits. If the price advantage is not obvious, then they are defined as is the single-factor necessity analysis, and the second part is the multifactor combination path 5

Ragin argued that fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) before combination path 7 analysis by multiple factors must performed necessity analysis for each single variable (Ragin 8 2000) . In general, necessary consistency refers to the degree to which the conditional variable 9 explains the outcome variable; that is, if a certain outcome occurs, then the possibility of the 10 existence of the conditional variable is the necessary consistency. If the necessary consistency of a 11 condition is greater than 0.9, then the factor is a necessary condition, and the resulting necessary 12 condition will be excluded in the subsequent analysis. First, we use fsQCA version 3.0, for 13 descriptive statistical variable analysis. Table 3 shows the mean and variance of each variable. 14 

2 Table 4 shows the single-factor necessity for enterprise survival. The results show that 3 "~R&D" is a necessary condition for enterprise survival; that is, the low R&D input of green 4 innovative enterprises is a necessary condition for enterprise survival, and in terms of explanatory 5 power, the necessary consistency of low R&D investment reaches 91% because the research 6 samples selected in this paper are award-winning green innovative enterprises. These enterprises 7 are small and medium-sized enterprises in scale, so their R&D capacity is generally weak. To 8 improve the survival rate, they must apply superior resources to the market. To prevent low R&D 9 necessity consistency from affecting the enterprise's survival path, we remove this variable in the 10 subsequent analysis. 11 and their opposite values are all less than the threshold, so no single factor is sufficient or necessary to cause the death of green innovative enterprises. 1

When analyzing the multifactor combination path, this paper first discusses the conditional In fsQCA analysis, coverage and consistency are used to determine whether the antecedent 12 conditional configuration is a necessary and sufficient condition for the explained variable. 13

Assuming that the X set is the antecedent condition, and the Y set is the interpreted result, then the 14 coverage is the ratio of the intersection of X and Y to the Y set, and the consistency is the ratio of Table 5 shows the six combined paths that affect the survival of green innovative enterprises. 11

The overall solution coverage of the combined paths is 88%, and the overall solution consistency 12 is 0.99. The highest coverage rate is path 1, the raw coverage rate is 32%, and the unique coverage 13 rate is 15%, that is, "University Cooperation*~ Technology Introduction" --green innovative 14 enterprises can survive with a high probability. As the combination path with the highest unique cooperative research and development with universities is more suitable for enterprises to improve 20 their own viability. A deeper analysis shows that, for enterprise survival, the influence of dynamic capability is far greater than that of resource-based capability. If green innovative enterprises want 1 to obtain better viability, then they must give full play to dynamic capability to gain more 2 competitive advantages. Returning to the case, it can be found that the cases of Green Water 3

Source, Shangde Technology and Sanyi Garden confirm the findings of this paper. If an enterprise 4 wants to improve its survival ability, then it must make full use of the external resources of the 5 enterprise. Here, we find an interesting phenomenon: usually the technology acquisition of 6 external resources occurs mainly through university research and development and technology 7 introduction, while the cost of independent research and development is much higher than the 8 purchase of high tech. Since most of China's green innovative enterprises are in the initial stage 9

and do not have sufficient financial resources, they will choose the low-risk and high-return way 10 of cooperative research and development of universities to improve the survival probability of 11

Paths 2a, 2b, and 2c, as a set of neutral permutations, have the same core elements of 13 dynamic capabilities, that is, "Government Support*~Universities Cooperation". Among them, the 14 raw coverage rate of Path 2a is 18%, and the unique coverage rate is 5%, indicating that, even if 15 some green innovation enterprises do not cooperate with universities to research and develop, the 16 number of patents is relatively small, but as long as they have government support and continuous 17 innovation, enterprises can also achieve good survivability; The "Government Support *~ Note: • indicates that the condition variable exists, ⊗indicates that the condition variable is 8 missing, the large circle represents the core element, and the small circle represents the peripheral 9 element. "Blank" indicates that the condition may or may not appear in the path. 

The results of the multifactor combination path analysis of the death of green innovation 11 enterprises are shown in Table 6 , from which three paths of death can be found, with the overall 12 solution coverage rate of 57%. Among them, the highest coverage rate is Path 2, in which the raw 13 coverage rate and the unique coverage rate are both 29%, indicating that companies without missing, the large circle represents the core element, and the small circle represents the peripheral 2 element. "Blank" indicates that the condition may or may not appear in the path. 3

From the perspective of internal and external capabilities, it can be found that the lack of 4

Product Competitiveness and Sustainable Innovation has an absolutely negative impact on the 5 death of enterprises, indicating that the lack of resource-based capacity will lead to the death of 6 enterprises. By comparison with the parsimonious solution, it can be seen that the core elements 7

for the death of green innovation enterprises include three factors in the dynamic capability 

1 enterprise survival and death 2 Table 7 can be obtained by comparing the key factors influencing the multifactor 3 combination path analysis in the previous paper. We found that the two core elements of enterprise 4 survival and death were mutually reinforcing in the two factors of government support and 5 product competitiveness. It can be understood that green innovative enterprises with government 6 support and highly competitive products showed better viability than those without such 7

conditions. This understanding reveals the necessary rules for enterprise survival from one side. In 8 terms of dynamic capability acquisition, enterprises should firmly grasp various supportive 9

policies of the government to improve their viability, while they should also make full use of 10 internal resources to develop competitive products to overcome various uncertain risks in the 11 market. Comparing the core elements, it can be seen that there is no mutual verification effect 12 among other factors. The asymmetry of the results shows that, even for the same green innovative 13 enterprise, the complement of the core elements affecting its survival is not necessarily the key 14 factor affecting its failure. Even if all of the antecedents are exactly the same, the antecedent 15 combination path that can cause the green innovative enterprise to survive normally is not 16 necessarily the complement of the antecedent combination path that leads to its death (FISS 2011). 17

Because of the complex causes of social phenomena, the conclusions are unreliable if only 18 traditional symmetric correlation analysis is used to explain them. As shown in Table 6 , the low 19 technology introduction is a favorable factor for the survival of enterprises, while the high 20 technology introduction is not an unfavorable factor for the death of enterprises. This causal 21 asymmetry breaks the stereotype of correlation in traditional analysis. Therefore, whether for the 22 study of enterprise survival or enterprise death, this paper proves the suitability of the principle of 1 causal asymmetry for the subject matter of this study to some extent. 2 

2 According to the above analysis results, we found that low R&D is a necessary condition for 3 the survival of green innovative enterprises in China; that is, low R&D is a significant feature of 4 surviving enterprises, in contrast to some existing research conclusions. Li et al held that R&D 5 capability is the core capability for enterprises to survive, and enterprises' R&D investments can 6 significantly reduce the failure of enterprise management (Li, Shang et al. 2010 ). The research 7 subject of this paper is green innovative enterprises. Innovation is its prominent feature. It is 8 difficult to match low R&D with innovation. Thus, how can we understand the conclusions of this 9 article? From the special background of China's green innovation enterprises, on the one hand, 10 green innovation enterprises mostly belong to small and medium-sized enterprises, and such 11 enterprises are established in a short time and on a small scale, so the survival problem is the 12 primary problem that they face. Lower R&D investment can reduce the financial risk faced by 13 enterprises, which is more conducive to the survival of enterprises. On the other hand, since 14

China's green innovative enterprises currently focus mainly on process innovation at present, their 15 innovation belongs to the category of gradual innovation, and they are unable to bear the pressure 16 and risks brought by radical innovation. Therefore, the low R&D investment of Chinese green 17 innovative enterprises is determined by their own technology innovation strategy, and the low 18 R&D investment is also conducive to the survival of enterprises. show its efficiency in dynamic capability, then these support behaviors will lead to a better achievement. 1

Combined with the results of this paper, on the one hand, since the Chinese government has a 2 profound impact on China's green innovation industry through financial subsidies and 3 environmental regulations, government support has a decisive impact on the survival of China's 4 green innovation enterprises. In addition, industry-university-research cooperation provides strong 5 technical support for green innovative enterprises, which is also conducive to the construction of 6 competitive advantages in the fierce market competition for green innovative enterprises to 7 survive better. Therefore, external dynamic capability represented by government support is the 8 core capability of enterprise survival. 9

On the other hand, the death of China's green innovative enterprises is closely related to the 10 lack of internal resources. Even with good external support, enterprises can fail due to the lack of 11 internal resources, among which the most important factor is product competitiveness. If the 12 enterprise cannot form the advantage of product competitiveness through the integration of 13 internal resources, then it is difficult to reduce the death probability of the enterprise. Considering 14 Aobo Group as an example, the case mentioned that Aobo Group introduced advanced LOW-E 15 coated glass production line and production technology from the UK. In cooperation with Tianjin 16

University of Technology, Aobo Group successfully developed "LED light conversion ecological 17 glass", which can promote plant growth without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This 18 technology has obtained 54 patents and filled the gap of relevant technologies in China and has 19 been listed as a "key project of 863 program", "national natural science foundation project" and 20

"municipal key natural science foundation project" by the state and has received good external 21 support. However, because the enterprise produces high-tech products with relatively high production costs, the product does not have a relative price advantage in the market competition, 1 and the enterprise is difficult to operate, resulting in the enterprise legal person being included in 2 the list of dishonest persons, receiving equity pledges, and eventually dying. As a transitional economy, the market and the government have formed a unique "dual 6 structure". In addition to the inevitable impact of market forces on the survival and death of 7 enterprises, the impact of the government on the survival or death of enterprises cannot be ignored. 8

On the one hand, the analysis results of this paper show that government support is conducive to 9 the survival of enterprises, while the lack of government support will increase the risk of 10 enterprise death due to the late development of China's green technology innovation industry, and 11 most enterprises in the field of green innovation are small and medium-sized enterprises. Although 12 large enterprises have sufficient strength to implement green innovation, they lack the 13 corresponding impetus; therefore, government support is particularly important. He and Yang's 14 research showed that the government can guide and encourage enterprises to carry out green 15 innovation through fiscal and tax policies (He and Yang 2016) . This view is also verified in this 16

paper. The important role of the government is mainly reflected in the two variables of 17 "Government Support" and "Enterprise Ownership". Green innovative enterprises apply for 18 national projects and awards through self-developed core technologies, such as the "863 program" 19 and the "national demonstration project", which are supported by the government, or the 20 ownership of the enterprise belongs to the country and enjoys rich political resources. All of these approaches can help to improve the survival rates of green innovative enterprises in the initial 1

At the same time, the government can also formulate policies and regulations to regulate the 3 environment, thus forcing enterprises to implement green innovation; On the other hand, through 4 the combination of the two elements of government support and enterprise ownership, we can find 5 that state-owned enterprises are more likely to obtain government support than private enterprises, 6 so the enterprise's survival is also higher. R&D is conducive to the improvement of enterprise performance, it is an uncertain event with 5 large risks and long cycles. For Chinese green innovative enterprises, due to their small scale, 6 limited internal and external resources, and weak ability to resist risks, low R&D is the optimal 7 strategy for their early survival; second, compared with resource-based capabilities, dynamic 8 capabilities can better promote the survival of green innovative enterprises in China. In particular, 9 government support is crucial to the survival of green innovative enterprises. Compared with 10 dynamic capability, the lack of resource-based capability is key to the death of enterprises. Among 11 enterprises, R&D expenditures, sustainable innovation and product competitiveness are the core 12 elements affecting their death. Third, by comparing the core elements influencing the survival and 13 death of enterprises, we found that government support and product competitiveness had mutually 14 reinforcing effects; that is, green innovative enterprises with government support and highly 15 competitive products showed better viability than those without such conditions. 16 17 The contribution of the research results of this article to theory is mainly divided into three 18 parts. First, our research has enriched the content of research related to enterprise survival from 19 the resource-based view and dynamic capability view. We have summarized the existing survival 20 research literature by combining abstract theories into nine variables and using case studies combined with qualitative comparative analysis methods to combine the survival scenarios of 1 Chinese green innovation companies to understand the specific aspects that can be used by RBV 2 and DCV to help SMEs to improve their survival probability; second, we have comprehensively 3 interpreted the controversial research results. For the previous survival research literature, some 4 influencing factors have appeared in contradictory conclusions from different studies. For example, 5 government subsidies have produced mutually exclusive conclusions in the study of the survival 6 of the same type of enterprise. This paper effectively resolves this dilemma using the method of 7 fsQCA. By adding situational factors to survival research and combining the analysis methods of 8 multivariate path combination to explain the situation in which the same variable leads to different 9

conclusions, we break through the dilemma and gain new theoretical insights. Third, existing 10 research on survival has often assumed that there is symmetry in causality, while neglecting to 11 discuss the survival dilemma of the enterprise from both sides, Our research found that the lack of 12 resource-based capabilities of an enterprise is more likely to cause the death of the enterprise, and 13 having a certain degree of dynamic capabilities is very conducive to the survival and development 14 of the enterprise. In management research, avoiding the production of a negative result and 15

promoting the production of a positive result should be of equal importance. Using this causal 16 asymmetry method can inspire more scholars to supplement the research on the causes of the 17 reverse results of previous research problems, thereby prompting a more comprehensive study of 18 enterprise survival. should be cautious about internal R&D investment and should consider seeking cooperation with 2 universities and research institutes to obtain technological innovation. Second, since 3 resource-based capability and dynamic capability play important roles in the survival and death of 4

China's green innovative enterprises, enterprises must always pay attention to the adjustments and 5 changes of internal resource-based capability and external dynamic capability to ensure their 6 coordinated development. Finally, since government support is of great significance to the survival 7

of China's current green innovation enterprises, and green innovation enterprises themselves find 8 it difficult to carry out large-scale research and development, the government should give strong 9

R&D support to enterprises with competitive products so that these enterprises can implement 10 continuous innovation and grow rapidly into leading enterprises, driving the development of the 11 whole green innovation market and industry and laying a solid foundation for promoting the 12 development of China's green economy. 13 14 7 Research limitations 1 Although this paper has made some contributions to the theoretical and practical significance 2 of research on the survival of green innovative companies, it still has limitations. First, the 3 research data in this article come from cases, and the amount of information in the cases is limited. 4

To study authenticity and objectivity, we have attempted to find sufficient information to describe 5 the survival scenarios of green innovative enterprises, but we still cannot exclude certain 6 deviations. For example, environmental uncertainty is closely related to dynamic capabilities. This 7 issue has been studied and discussed by a large number of scholars. Under different uncertain 8 environments, the dynamic capabilities of enterprises will have different effects on survival status. 9

However, due to the limited amount of information in the cases, we have no way to investigate the 10 survival status of enterprises in uncertain environments in detail here. In future research, we can 11 discuss the survival of enterprises in uncertain environments based on questionnaire data to further 12 improve research on the survival of green innovative enterprises. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. 2

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Analyzing IT-enabled Effectiveness in Government 25 Sector: A RBV and Dynamic Capability Perspective

Management of environmental performance, and competitive advantage: Role of environmental training

Green innovation and 3 environmental performance: The role of green transformational leadership and green human 4 resource management

The longer term effects of federal subsidies on 6 firm survival: evidence from the advanced technology program

The survival and non survival of micro firms in the UK

Measuring and Integrating Risk Management into Green 11

Innovation Practices for Green Manufacturing under the Global Value Chain

Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management

Metropolitan innovation, firm size, and 15 business survival in a high-tech industry

Set-theoretic methods for the social sciences: A guide to qualitative 17 comparative analysis

Exports, imports and firm survival: First evidence for manufacturing 19 enterprises in Germany

Get Creative: Why Green Innovation is the Key to Business Growth--Even 21 in Tough Times

Embrace•perform•model: Complexity theory, contrarian case analysis, 23 and multiple realities

Applying complexity theory: A primer for 25 identifying and modeling firm anomalies

Evaluating the Effect of Soft Business Support upon Small 27 Firm Performance

Forecasting Corporate Failure in the Chinese Energy 3 Sector: A Novel Integrated Model of Deep Learning and Support Vector Machine

High-tech start-up firm survival originating from a 6 combined use of internal resources

Does innovation facilitate firm survival? Evidence 8 from Chinese high-tech firms

Innovation stages, knowledge spillover, and green 10 economy development: moderating role of absorptive capacity and environmental regulation

Buffering and Enabling: The Impact of Interlocking 13

Political Ties on Firm Survival and Sales Growth

Shenfu Technology co.LTD, Aobo Group 16 and development dilemma, and only matching high R&D capacity with product competitiveness can enhance their survival capabilities

green enterprises, and dynamic capacity is the key factor for the survival of green innovative enterprises