Rural entrepreneurship in an emerging economy: Reading institutional perspectives from entrepreneur stories

Rural entrepreneurs are of extreme importance in China's progress toward a more market-oriented economy as the vast majority of Chinese live in rural areas. From an institutional perspective and based on content analysis of 91 publicly published stories about rural Chinese entrepreneurs broadcast by China Central Television, this paper addresses several key aspects of rural entrepreneurship in China and specifically probes into how different institutional elements (i.e., regulative, normative, and cognitive components) affect the strategic behaviors of rural Chinese entrepreneurs. We found that due to weak regulatory protection of intellectual rights, rural entrepreneurs in China tend to work on innovations on their own or with close family members instead of collaborating with external sources; these entrepreneurs use guanxi strategically to deal with constraints from the institutional environment; it is important to build legitimacy by either building alliances with large, established firms, or acquiring approval from people of authority.