创始人初始社会地位与社会资本对创业绩效的影响研究

Performance Effects of Initial Social Status and Social Capital of New Venture Founders

随着经济发展的多元化以及就业压力的增加,创业在中国变得越来越重要。基于创业研究的社会网络观和社会分层理论,对中国情景中创业企业新生期劣势进行新的诠释,并实证检验不同社会资本对于长期创业绩效的影响。创始人社会资本影响创业绩效,然而作为重要的情景因素,初始社会地位如何影响社会资本对创业绩效的影响却知之甚少。创业者社会资本是克服新生期劣势的重要资源,但仅关注创业者自我中心式网络带来的社会资源,社会分层理论认为社会地位差异会影响社会资本的作用。将创业者自我中心式网络按照关系强度和关系功能区分出4类社会资本,并将初创期社会地位差异用创业者及其父母职业声望加以度量。基于1978年至1999年权威的实务性商业期刊所刊文章等文档资料进行手工编码,获得182名企业家数据,通过Logistic和Cox回归模型分析进行实证检验。研究结果表明,创业初期的创业者自我职业声望作为创业承诺和信号,导致积极的社会资本效应,但父母职业声望会改变自我中心网络的内容和运作机制,引起消极的社会资本效应。可见与依靠父母的社会地位相比,在创业初期创业者自强自立获得更好的地位资源更容易促进社会资本的积极作用,有助于促进创业企业的成长,这一发现为创业者及合作伙伴的选择提供指导和借鉴。研究通过引入社会资本的关系强度(强关系和弱关系)和关系功能(桥接和黏合)两个维度拓展创业研究的社会网络观,对创业中的社会资本情景进行检验,发现初始社会地位调节社会资本的绩效影响,将社会学中常用的职业声望引入到创业研究中,可以获得更为有趣的结论并启发未来管理学的类似研究。

Entrepreneurship has become more and more important with the development of economic diversification and challenges of employment pressure in China. Based on the network-based perspective of entrepreneurial research and social stratification theory, this study explores the ＂liability of newness＂ in the Chinese context and social capital effects on the long-run performance of new ventures. Many empirical studies find social capitals of founders influence the survival of a new venture, yet we know little about the moderate effects of initial social status of the founder, especially social status obtained from parents and founder himself. From the network-based perspective of entrepreneurship, we propose that social capitals from the egocentric networks of founders can affect new venture performance , yet are moderated by initial social status. We classify social networks of founders into four types by strengths （ strong ties or weak ties） and functions （ bridging or bonding functions）, and measure initial social status by occupational prestige of founder himself and his parents before new venture startup. We firstly obtain a lists of new venture firms from famous business journal of China in 1978-1999, then code data manually of randomly selected 182 founders in the lists. Finally we analyze different effects of social capitals and initial social status on the long-run performance by using logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards models simultaneously to check the robustness of the results. Most of the hypotheses are supported by empirical results, which implies social status of founder himself is a signal of entrepreneurial commitment, and strengthens the positive effects of social capital on new venture performance. However, parents＇ occupational prestige may be contaminated by bias against commerce of traditional Chinese culture or socialist ideology, and changes contents and mechanism of egocentric network. Hence it brings in negative effects on social capitals. The study reveals that in the early stages of new ventures founded in China, it is better to take advantages of founder＇s initial higher social status than his parents＇ to overcome obstacles from liability of newness and transfer into a mature company. The contributions of this study are embodied as follows. First, we extend the network-based perspective of entrepreneurial research by classifying the social capital to four types from two dimensions, i.e. , strengths （ strong ties or weak ties） and functions （bridging or bonding functions）. Second, we explore contexts of different social capitals and propose initial social status moderates their effects. Third, we extend occupational prestige to entrepreneurial research, which may lead to some new theories and findings in the future.