How nonlocal entrepreneurial teams achieve sustainable performance: The interaction between regional entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy

Nonlocal entrepreneurship plays an important role in promoting regional economic development. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence of the subjective and objective factors (organizational legitimacy and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem) of nonlocal entrepreneurship on its sustainable performance and boundary conditions. Through the analysis of 608 questionnaires of 237 teams at different times, the following conclusions are drawn: First, we find that entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy effectively promote nonlocal entrepreneurial teams’ sustainable performance, and strategic flexibility has positive moderating effects on this relationship. Secondly, through polynomial regression and response surface analysis, we find that the interaction between entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy has a positive impact on sustainable performance. Specifically, compared with the inconsistent status of entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy, the sustainable performance is higher under a consistent status. Compared with the low consistency status of entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy, the sustainable performance in the high consistency status is higher. Therefore, we suggest that the government, universities, and enterprises should build entrepreneurial ecosystems to promote the sustainability of nonlocal entrepreneurial teams. For nonlocal entrepreneurial teams, organizational legitimacy and strategic flexibility should be enhanced. The presented research adds to the literature by integrating subject and object factors (organizational legitimacy and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem), which has important theoretical significance.