Growing in the changing global landscape: the intangible resources and performance of high-tech corporates

The Belt and Road Initiative and Sino-US trade war stand for the trend of globalization and de-globalization. The changing environment motivates innovative high-tech corporates to reassess their intangible resources such as R&D investment and top managers team (TMT) political ties, in order to attain competitive advantages. The study based on a sample of 223 listed Chinese most innovative high-tech corporates (2014–2018) confirms R&D intensity as burden and political ties as support for corporates’ short-term performance. TMT political ties may attenuate the negative effect of R&D intensity on performance. The negative influences of R&D are aggravated when high environmental dynamism in both the US and B&R countries markets. However, the positive influences of political ties are moderated differently by environmental dynamism in the two markets. For the US market, export environmental dynamism implies de-globalization and diminishes the positive effect of the political relations on performance. By contrast, for the B&R market, it suggests globalization and strengthens the positive effect of political ties.