Abstract: Corporate entrepreneurship has become an important means for enterprises to shape new advantages in the new era. Mining the driving factors of corporate entrepreneurship is one of the important research fields of entrepreneurship. From the perspective of regional guanxi culture, this paper discusses its mechanism and related boundary conditions in the formation of corporate entrepreneurship. Based on the data of Chinese listed companies, this study mainly draws the following conclusions. Firstly, the negative impact of regional guanxi culture on corporate entrepreneurship is established. After the endogeneity and robustness test, this result remains unchanged, and the effect is more obvious in regions with high economic development level and high marketization level. Secondly, regional guanxi culture has a negative impact on corporate entrepreneurship because it hinders corporate R&D investment, motivates management team to take an act of agency and provides no space for new business growth. Thirdly, the impact of regional guanxi culture on corporate entrepreneurship will be subject to the intensity of local governments’ innovation policies and national anti-corruption policies, namely, the stronger focus local governments put on innovation and anti-corruption policies, the better they are able to offset or mitigate the inhibitory effect of regional guanxi culture on corporate entrepreneurship. This paper theoretically helps to respond to the outstanding disputes between regional guanxi culture and innovation and entrepreneurship, and provides a theoretical basis for national and regional governments to implement innovation and entrepreneurship policies and whether and how companies should formulate entrepreneurial strategies.

Key words: regional guanxi culture, corporate entrepreneurship, social embeddedness theory, boundary conditions, path mechanism