Management Review

Management Review ›› 2026, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (8): 108-120.

• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management • Previous Articles    

The Impact of SRDI “Little Giant” Enterprises’ Participation in Standard-setting on Their Growth

Yang Yan1,2, He Xinru1, Wu Aiqi3, Wu Bo1,2   

  1. 1. School of Business Administration (MBA School), Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018;
    2. Zhejiang Merchant Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310007;
    3. School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058
  • Received:2024-05-29 Published:2026-09-11

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Abstract: The growth of SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises, which are an important force in curbing cutthroat competition around key core technologies, has received unprecedented attention and strong support from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of the People’s Republic of China. By participating in the development of national and industrial standards, SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises can better orient themselves in their high-quality development and gain support in terms of standards, but the existing research on the impact of their participation in standard development on their growth and the mechanism underlying the impact is not deep enough. This paper constructs a theoretical model based on signal theory and knowledge-based view, collects the data of 752 manufacturing SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises from 2015 to 2022, and empirically examines the impact of their participation in standard-setting on their growth and the boundary conditions. The study finds that SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises’ participation in standard-setting promotes their growth through the intermediary mechanism of increasing customer dispersion, and the scenario diversity attribute of enterprises negatively moderates the relationship between participation in standard setting and customer dispersion, while the technological sophistication attribute positively moderates the relationship between customer dispersion and growth; further analyses show that participation in standard-setting has a stronger effect on the growth of firms that are smaller in size and in more competitive industries. The findings of the study help deepen the understanding of the growth path of SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises, and provide a theoretical basis for “Little Giant” enterprises to break through the growth boundary and better play the role of chain-supplementing and chain-strengthening in a highly dynamic environment.

Key words: SRDI “Little Giant” enterprises, participation in standard-setting, firm growth, scenario diversity, technological refinement