Strategic change is very important to maintain sustainable competitive advantages, while there is still a controversy about whether strategic change can promote enterprise performance. This study focuses on the theory of enterprise evolution, and elaborates on the impact of strategic change on short-term performance from the perspective of resource dependence and social network. Then we conduct an empirical test based on the whole network of interlocking directorate from China, using the dataset of 2 055 listed firms in China from 2008 to 2012. The results indicate that:（1）strategic change has a significant negative effect on the short-term performance for the path dependence of enterprise evolution process;（2）based on the resource dependence view to explore the strategic evolution of enterprises, rich organizational slack within enterprises significantly and positively moderates the relationship between strategic change and short-term performance for the " buffer” effect;（3）based on the social network view to explore the strategic evolution of enterprises, industry heterogeneity connection effectively alleviates the negative effect of strategic deviation on the short-term performance for providing heterogeneous resources;（4）industry homogeneity connection effectively alleviates the negative effect of strategic variation on the short-term performance for providing a relatively stable internal environment;（5）based on the strength of social network to explore the strategic evolution of enterprises, the strength of social network effectively alleviates the negative effect of strategic change on the short-term performance for the efficient use of resources contained in the network. The research provides a dual guiding role for the practical confusion of enterprises’ strategic change and short-term performance.