2.1. Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Innovation Capability
Entrepreneurship is a concept with rich semantics, in the research of which, three mainstream schools have been formed: Austrian School, German School, and Neoclassical School. In the Austrian School, scholars have interpreted entrepreneurship in a broad and narrow sense. Broadly speaking, entrepreneurship mainly refers to the ability to withstand uncertain environments. Since the work of ordinary laborers is also highly uncertain, entrepreneurship is considered to be a trait of the personnel involved in the production activities of enterprises, not just owned by entrepreneurs [
12,
14]. In a narrow sense, entrepreneurship refers to the ability to cope with various risks in the process of realizing production structures and business models [
28,
29]. In the follow-up research, scholars further defined the concept of entrepreneurship. North emphasized in the new institutional economics that the spirit of cooperation is an important source of entrepreneurship [
30]. Dolan and Garcia pointed out that entrepreneurship encompasses not only ambition, creativity, and energy but also strong moral principles [
31]. Mort et al. pointed out that entrepreneurship needs to create corporate and social benefits [
32]. In addition to bearing risks, identifying and utilizing opportunities, and innovating, it should also balance the value of various stakeholders. Although different scholars have not yet unified the concept of entrepreneurship, the core connotation of which has basically reached an agreement, that is, the ability to discover and use opportunities to obtain observable rewards [
33]. By summarizing the research of existing scholars, this article believes that entrepreneurship includes five dimensions: innovation, cooperation, active competition, risk-taking, and society-helping [
30,
31,
32,
34,
35].
With the application of internet technology, more and more enterprises have realized platform transformation in the digital era. Enterprises can break through the boundary constraints of innovation elements to obtain sustainable innovation capability [
36]. Under the cultural atmosphere of openness, empowerment, and being people-oriented, the organization establishes customer-oriented and symbiotic values among members of the organization by providing emotional and instrumental support to employees so that employees can devote themselves to the cultivation of core competitiveness of enterprises in the guidance of consistent goals [
24,
37]. Entrepreneurship as an important innovation resource of an enterprise has an important impact on the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises. This article makes the following theoretical conjectures on the relationship between entrepreneurship and the enterprises’ sustainable innovation capability: First, entrepreneurship emphasizes the spirit of innovation and collaboration, and the transmission of innovation spirit within the enterprise can drive members to break through the existing knowledge system [
38]. Enterprises achieve the upgrading of innovative technology through the collaboration between employees and the continuous exchange of explicit knowledge and hidden knowledge. This is the basic guarantee for realizing the sustainable innovation capability of the enterprises [
10,
39]. Second, when enterprises are facing complex situations, it is beneficial to have an active competition strategy that can formulate forward-looking innovation strategies, flexibly adjust innovative research and development activities according to the changes of the situation. It ensures enterprises’ long-term innovation and development [
4,
6,
40]. Third, the risk-taking in entrepreneurship can fully discover the problems existing in the process of innovation activities. It effectively formulates risk response measures, improves the accuracy and effectiveness of innovation policies, further clarifies innovation goals and directions, and accelerates the construction of internal innovation culture. In order to create a good internal innovation atmosphere, risk-taking entrepreneurship enhances communication among members in the company to achieve improvement of the sustainable innovation capability of the enterprises [
41,
42]. Finally, the entrepreneurship can regulate the direction of enterprise innovation and development, promote enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities and value creation activities consistent with social values, and respond positively to social issues [
43]. It discovers innovative problems from practice and maintains a keen sense of practical issues to promote the improvement of the sustainable innovation capability of the enterprises. Therefore, this article makes the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1 (H1). Entrepreneurship has a positive impact on an enterprise’s sustainable innovation capability.
2.2. Entrepreneurship, Organizational Commitment, and Sustainable Innovation Capability
The concept of organizational commitment was first proposed by Becker, who refers to the consistent tendency of employees due to their unilateral investment in the organization. The author reflects the employees’ identification of organizational value and organizational culture [
24]. On this basis, Allen and Meyer et al. formed the three-factor model of organizational commitment that are most widely used [
44]. Affective commitment is the core of organizational commitment, which mainly refers to employees’ substantive emotion toward the organization. It includes organizational goal identification and the employee’s sense of pride [
45]. Different organizational commitments represent different psychological states of the organization and its employees. They not only imply the loyalty of employees who are willing to stay in the organization but also contain the employees’ recognition of organizational value and culture [
24].
First, the main purpose of entrepreneurship is to encourage innovation. The organizations with entrepreneurship pay more attention to arousing and strengthening the consistent identity of employees. By building a platform for communication between employees and shaping an open innovation culture and triggering the promotion of employees’ affective commitment, employees develop a stronger desire to stay and make substantial contributions to the organization [
46].
Second, entrepreneurship means that the organization has a stronger sense of risk-taking [
41,
42]. The decision-making power of leaders in enterprises has been effectively implemented, and employees begin to realize the importance of their own decision-making opinions for the realization of the value objectives of the organization; thus, they show positive innovation behavior based on ownership consciousness and devote themselves to the construction of innovation activities to help the organization obtain the sustainable competitive advantage [
47].
Finally, entrepreneurship encourages employees to conduct more cross-departmental cooperation by creating a sharing cooperation atmosphere, which enables the members of the organization to gradually establish their own role orientation in the interaction with the organization and other members, so as to bind the realization of organizational goals and individual values. Higher willingness of risk-taking leads to higher level of creativity [
48,
49]. Existing studies have confirmed the impact of affective commitment on employees’ creativity and innovative behavior. They found that employees with high affective commitment usually establish emotional links with the organization, which can improve their ability to anticipate the loss of organizational well-being and thus help to promote their willingness to make self-sacrifice in order to protect the interests of the organization [
24,
44,
46]. Swailes found that affective commitment is an important factor in innovation [
50]. Employees with high affective commitment tend to find innovative ways to solve problems in their work so as to improve the sustainable innovation capability of the organization. Li et al. pointed out that the affective commitment of the organization will promote the transformation of knowledge resources into innovation achievements, so as to improve the innovation ability of the organization [
51]. To summarize, this paper makes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 2 (H2). Entrepreneurship has a positive impact on affective commitment.
Hypothesis 3 (H3). Affective commitment has a positive impact on the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises.
Hypothesis 4 (H4). Entrepreneurship influences the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises through the mediating role of affective commitment. That is to say, entrepreneurship has a facilitating effect on affective commitment, so as to promote the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises.
Continuance commitment refers to the fact that employees have to stay in the team when they realize the loss of leaving the team. It is a constraint on individual behavior based on the cost of leaving the organization [
24]. In fact, employees with high continuance commitment usually think that they are embedded in a certain environment that cannot be chosen, and they are in a psychological experience of “have to” or “must”. Although they may not want to stay in the organization, they have to remain in it, because the employees with continuance commitment maintain the employment relationship only through economic exchange [
52]. In this situation, enterprises do not encourage employees to undertake any extra work to some extent.
However, in the digital era, the existence of entrepreneurship weakens the traditional employment relationship between the organization and the employees; instead, the relationship between the organization and the employees tends to form a cooperative relationship based on emotion and trust [
8,
21]. The organization with entrepreneurship obtains the emotional identity of employees by establishing universal values, thus forming a common mental model among employees [
53]. The purpose of employees’ work is no longer simply limited to economic benefits but to whether they can achieve the growth of the organization and enhance their self-worth through joint efforts with others [
54]. This process stimulates the employees’ responsibility behavior to the organization and makes the employees’ willingness to stay in the organization stronger. What’s more, entrepreneurship emphasizes taking risks and meeting challenges actively. With the increasingly flat organizational structure, the organization encourages employees to solve problems around customer’s needs, and employees are not stuck to the inherent work form of top–down and waiting for instructions [
55]. The organization creates more added value for customers by giving employees more decision-making power and growth space, thus reducing the continuance commitment of employees. The innovation and cooperation orientation of entrepreneurship means that the organization supports the cross-functional communication of employees, that is, everyone can become the leader of a project; the employees can obtain emotional support and ability recognition in the interaction with other department members and then perceive their own importance to the organization, so as to make employees improve their work devotion motivation and psychological security, and engage in behaviors beneficial to the organization or team [
56]. As a result, employee commitment can be reduced effectively.
On the other hand, most of the existing studies emphasize the negative impact of continuance commitment on employee innovation behavior and organizational innovation performance [
57,
58]. The essential reason is that continuance commitment is an organization–employee relationship based on economic exchange. High continuance commitment conditions mean that employees are more concerned about the gains and losses of existing resources or capabilities. Usually, they are more inclined to choose two kinds of negative behavioral reactions of passive acceptance or obedience, or indifference or avoidance, so that they are not willing to engage in risky or innovative behavior [
24,
50,
57]. In the digital era, the low continuance commitment of employees means that employees will not be constrained by forced sacrifice and selection difficulties, so that employees can get rid of the worries behind them. Employees will voluntarily participate in the innovation activities of the organization to put their own resources and abilities into the construction process of the core competitive advantage of the organization by exerting their personal creativity and promoting the knowledge interaction within the organization so as to continuously cultivate the sustainable innovation capability of the organization. To summarize, this paper makes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 5 (H5). Entrepreneurship has a negative impact on continuance commitment.
Hypothesis 6 (H6). Continuance commitment has a negative impact on the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises.
Hypothesis 7 (H7). Entrepreneurship influences the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises through the mediating role of continuance commitment, that is, entrepreneurship has an inhibitory effect on continuance commitment, thus promoting the improvement of the sustainable innovation capability of enterprises.
2.3. The Moderating Effect of Perceived Organizational Support
Organizational support theory was formally proposed by Kurtessis et al. on the basis of “organizational justice theory” and “social exchange theory” [
59]. Perceived organizational support refers to the extent to which employees feel that the organization attaches importance to their own contributions and benefits. McMillin divided perceived organizational support into emotional support and instrumental support on the basis of Kurtessis’ research. Perceived organizational support comes from the employees’ perception and view of the organization [
60]. Baran et al. further pointed out that the perceived organizational support refers to the idea that employees feel the organization supports their work, cares for their interests, and recognizes their values [
61]. It is a comprehensive evaluation and judgment of employees’ attitude toward the organization based on their own perception and experience, which determines whether employees can devote themselves to the activities of organizational innovation [
62,
63]. Some studies believe that perceived organizational support is the premise of employees’ organizational commitment [
64]. According to the “reciprocity principle” of social exchange theory, high perceived organizational support means that employees fully feel the concern and help of the organization for their investment, which helps to show the entrepreneurship of employees. Employees initiate the consciousness and behavior of active innovation to achieve mutual benefit and symbiosis with the organization [
65]. In the process, employees will show stronger responsibility of contribution to the achievement of organizational interests and goals, which urges them to repay the organization with higher organizational commitment and harder work.
What’s more, the necessary resources and support are the key to the organization to achieve innovation. The organization provides substantial resource support to employees through empowerment so as to reduce employees’ perceptions of innovation risk and ease the relationship embeddedness between organization and employees based on economic exchange. It enables employees to focus on the thinking of customer-oriented solutions so as to improve their self-worth and reduce their continuance commitment [
47,
55]. Existing studies have verified that supportive culture and atmosphere are not only conducive to predict employees’ innovative behavior but also contribute to the formation of an organizational atmosphere of trust and cooperation [
66]. Perceived organizational support can make employees feel the support, understanding, and recognition of their ability from other members of the organization. By doing so, it produces a series of positive emotional experiences, which can induce employees’ continuous cooperative behavior so that employees can obtain more sense of belonging and organizational identity through efficient cooperation, interpersonal interaction, and information exchange and ultimately enhance employees’ affective commitment. To summarize, this paper makes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 8 (H8). Perceived organizational support positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and affective commitment, that is, when the perceived organizational support is stronger, the impact of entrepreneurship on affective commitment will be stronger.
Hypothesis 9 (H9). Perceived organizational support positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and continuance commitment, that is, when the perceived organizational support is stronger, the negative impact of entrepreneurship on continuance commitment will be stronger.
2.4. The Moderating Effect of Person–Organization Value Fit
Person–organization value fit refers to the similarity or consistency between individual values of employees and organizational values. It is a criterion for employees to guide work behavior, evaluate work value, and measure whether goals are in line with organizational expectations [
67]. Enterprises need to gather the personal goals of all employees so that employees can reach an agreement with the needs of enterprises in terms of beliefs, values, etc. Existing studies have verified the influence of person–organization value fit on employee’s work engagement, work attitude, and innovative behavior [
68,
69]. Value fit can strengthen the emotional connection between organization and employees [
69]. This study suggests that enterprises generally advocate the value concept of encouraging innovation and symbiosis in digital era [
70]. According to the theory of person–environment fit, the fit between individual and environment is helpful to stimulate the individual’s positive attitude and behavior [
71]. When the person–organization value fit is high, employees can fully understand and practice the organization’s fundamental demands for innovation. They actively establish the fundamental connection between their own goals and the realization of organizational values and strive to make up for the gap between themselves and the expectations of the organization so as to form a stronger affective commitment to the organization [
45,
46,
69]. At the same time, the role and identity of employees in the organization has changed from “employee” to “entrepreneur” [
8,
10,
12,
13]. The organizational value of “employee being the master” releases the spirit of taking risk and taking responsibility of individuals, and the actual working status of employees is improved. They have more independent decision-making power and can solve the enterprise problems through informal team structure and at the same time obtain more sense of achievement in the realization of self-worth promotion [
72]. Employees who share the same values with the organization will feel harmonious in the organization. At the same time, they will be more likely to obtain organizational identification and resource support, reduce the uncertainty of employees in innovation activities, and improve their sense of job security [
68,
73]. Therefore, employees can feel the attraction of the organization and choose to stay in the organization by contributing their own creativity and innovation, realizing the common growth with the organization. To summarize, this paper makes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 10 (H10). Person–organization value fit positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and affective commitment, that is, when the organizational support is stronger, the positive impact of entrepreneurship on affective commitment will be stronger.
Hypothesis 11 (H11). Person–organization value fit positively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and affective commitment, that is, when the organizational support is stronger, the negative impact of entrepreneurship on continuance commitment will be stronger.
The research model of this study is shown in
Figure 1.