社会资本与家族企业跨代创新关系研究:基于战略参考点转移的视角

Social Capital and Transgenerational Innovation in Family Firms:A Strategic Reference Point Shift Perspective

在以创新驱动高质量发展的背景下,家族企业如何应对代际传承和创新驱动高质量发展的双重挑战已经成为学术界和政府共同关注的话题。基于战略参考点理论,本文提出,对于代际传承中的家族企业而言,社会资本是驱动代际传承中家族企业战略参考点转移以及缓解创新水平降低的关键因素。本文选取2011~2016年中国A股制造行业的上市家族企业为研究样本,研究结果表明:进入代际传承后,家族企业以保持家族控制这一体现过去及内部导向的参考点为主导,从而抑制了企业的创新活动;从企业性社会资本来看,随着金融关系资本、行业协会关系资本及合作伙伴关系资本的提升,家族企业战略参考点会“由内转外”具有更强的外部导向,因此能够缓解代际传承对家族企业创新的抑制作用;但政治关系资本的提升,会强化家族企业战略参考点的内部导向,加重代际传承对家族企业创新的抑制作用;二代家族性社会资本的提升,会使家族企业战略参考点“由后向前”具有更强的未来导向,因此能够缓解代际传承对家族企业创新的抑制作用。本文进一步研究发现,代际传承期对创新的抑制作用主要反映在以发明专利为代表的实质性创新上,而非以实用新型和外观设计类专利为代表的策略性创新。本文基于战略参考点转移,以集体知识结构为内在作用机制,将社会资本与家族企业战略参考点的转移结合起来,揭示了社会资本在提升代际传承期家族企业创新活力中的关键作用,为处于代际传承中的家族企业打破旧的战略参考点、实现创新转型提供了理论依据。

Family firms have now become the most indispensable part of the private economy,and the high-quality develop-ment of China’s economy cannot be achieved without the contribution of family firms.However,more than half of the family firms have already entered the transgenerational succession,and research shows that family firms in the transgenerational succession may face the problem of interrupted or insufficient innovation.Therefore,under the background of innovation-driven high-quality de-velopment,how family firms deal with the dual challenges of transgenerational succession and innovation-driven high-quality de-velopment has become a topic of common concern in academic circles and the government.Existing studies on the innovation deci-sions of family firms during transgenerational succession mostly use Socioemotional Wealth as a strategic reference point,but the multidimensional and dynamic nature of strategic reference points for family firms is not adequately considered.Based on strategic reference point theory,this paper introduces social capital to the study of innovation in family firms in trans-generational succession,using the collective knowledge structure of decision-making teams as an intrinsic mechanism of action.By combining thenext generation family social capital with the temporal dimension of strategic reference points and the firm social cap-ital with the spatial dimension of strategic reference points,the paper reveals how social capital drives the shift of strategic reference points in family firms in transgenerational succession and mitigates the reduction of innovation.Finally,the analysis is verified u-sing empirical tests.This article takes the listed family firms in the manufacturing industry of China’s A-share from 2011 to 2016 as a research sample,and the sample data were all obtained from the CSMAR database.The social capital were self-coded based on the family member structure data,executive biographies and public information of family firms in the CSMAR database,and statistical analy-sis was conducted using the software STATA 14.0.This paper chooses the generalised method of moments estimation(GMM)to es-timate the dynamic model.And in this paper,the independent and control variables are estimated with a lag of 1 period relative to the dependent variable to reflect the influence of the past historical values of the independent and control variables on the dependent variables.The empirical results show that:After the start of transgenerational succession,family firms are dominated by maintaining fam-ily control as a reference point which is past and internal orientation,thus inhibiting innovation in the firms;from the perspective of firm social capital,with the increase of financial relational capital,industry association relational capital and partner relational cap-ital,strategic reference points will“turn from internal to external”with a stronger external orientation,so it can alleviate the inhib-itory effect of transgenerational succession on the innovation level of family firms;however,the increase of political relational cap-ital can reinforce the internal orientation of the strategic reference points and exacerbate the inhibitory effect of transgenerational succession on the innovation level of family firms;with the increase of next generation family social capital,strategic reference points will“turn from past to future”with a stronger future orientation,so it can alleviate the inhibitory effect of transgenerational succession on the innovation level of family firms.Further research found that the inhibiting effect of the transgenerational succes-sion on innovation was concentrated in substantive innovation represented by invention patents,rather than strategic innovation re-presented by patents in the utility model and design categories.The research contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1)This paper introduces the theory of strategic reference points into the study of the innovation problem of family firms,which provides reference points with multidimen-sional characteristics for their formulation of strategic decisions and enriches the theoretical study of the innovation problem of family firms.(2)By combining social capital with theshift of strategic reference points of family firms in transgenerational succession through the collective knowledge structure of decision-making teams,this paper provides a new research direction for the study of the role of social capital in influencing family firm innovation in transgenerational succession,and also promotes the application and development of social capital in the study of family firm innovation during transgenerational succession.(3)This paper is not only valuable for family firms in transgenerational succession to improve their own innovation level and maintain their“foundation”at the micro level,but also provides management inspiration and practical suggestions for innovation-driven high-quality development at the macro level.This paperalso has some limitations and needs further refinement:(1)As most of the family firms in China are concentrated in the manufacturing industry,and the business condition of the manufacturing industry is relatively stable,this paper shows more research analysis of this part of family firms,and the sample can be expanded to other industries in the future to enrich the research in this area.(2)In this paper,social capital is differentiated from the attributes of social capital into firm social capital and family social capital.Future research can adopt other classifications to enrich the study of social capital in the shift of strategic reference points of family firms in transgenerational succession.(3)Social capital,such as financial relationship capital,is divided into cen-tral and local levels,and their roles are theoretically different.However,this paper does not further elaborate on the impact of dif-ferent levels of social capital on the strategic reference point shift of family firms based on the strategic reference point theory,and fails to conduct further research,which is a shortcoming of this paper and an area for future research.