Research On The Relationship Between Entrepreneur Social Capital, Dynamic Capability And Technological Innovation Performance

Current organization structures show a growing trend of network. Simply relying on the mining of internal resources in enterprises cannot meet their needs of technology innovation, thus effective use of external resources naturally becomes the key factor for enterprise innovation. At the same time, the organizational resources have been developed from material resources and human resources to network resources. The way of thinking the enterprise’s technology innovation is also changed from atomism to network. Entrepreneurs, as the natural starting point and the key learning agent of improving the technology innovation ability, are embedded with social network and the derived actual and potential resources, or to say, entrepreneur’s social capital. Thesa scources will have an important impact on the competitive edge and organizational performance. Nowadays some roles of regulation organization like government are omitted and the regulated social resources based on general trust and social network are scarce. However, existing researches are mostly based on successful network experience assumption that only through the wide communication with the individuals of external network, can the entrepreneurs acquire and utilize the knowledge resource and capital resources so as to improve the performance of enterprise technology innovation. But for entrepreneurs, the discussion is inadequate about what social capital is and how it effectively improve the performance of enterprise technology innovation.This work takes sample of privately operated high-tech enterprises in our country and studies the essential issue concerning how entrepreneur’s social capital influence the performance improvement of enterprises technology innovation. In order to uncover the intrinsic black-box mechanism, the intermediation between entrepreneur’s social capital and technology innovation of enterprise’s dynamic ability is put forward in terms of enterprises technology and market dynamic capability. The theoretical framework of "entrepreneur’s social capital, dynamic capability and technology innovation performance" is formed and studied layer by layer:(1) What is the influence of entrepreneur’s social capital on technology innovation performance; (2) Through the survey and empirical statistical analysis, the intermediation of enterprises’technology and market dynamic capability is clear between entrepreneur’s social capital and technology innovation performance;(3) To explore the effect of entrepreneurship on the relationship between entrepreneur’s social capital and market dynamic capability. The fundamental conclusions are summed as follow.Firstly, the positive mobilization of "network plus resource", namely enterprise’s technology dynamic capability, market dynamic capability and entrepreneur’s social capital, is the requirement for improvement of technology innovation.Through literature review and theoretical deduction, this paper analyzes the influence of technical dynamic capabilities and market dynamic capabilities on the improvement of enterprise’s technology innovation performance. It is found that the improvement of inner-enterprise dynamic capabilities and entrepreneur’s social capital resources promote jointly the technology innovation performance. In the mutual complementation of established internal capability and external network resources, this study demonstrates that entrepreneurs translate the potential internal dynamic capabilities and resources complementarity of network mobilization to the key factors for the performance of enterprise innovation. These social capital resources are transformed into the enterprise’s technical ability and market ability, thereby affecting the enterprise’s technology innovation.Secondly, the different aspects of entrepreneur’s social capital have positive effect on the enterprises technology innovation and the effect comes into play through the intermediate of enterprises dynamic capability.The structural dimension, relational dimension and cognitive dimension of entrepreneur’s social capital are beneficial to the improvement of enterprise’s technological innovation performance. In fact, the special status and social capital abundance of the key learning persons "entrepreneurs" give the strong entrepreneurial social capital of knowledge resources and assets resources and the effect with agglomeration. The more contents of the information sources containing in various types of social network of entrepreneurs are, the more social resources are able to mobilize and use. Therefore, through social capital, entrepreneurs cannot only enhance the enterprise’s technology and market ability, but also gain more recognition and support from external stakeholder, namely network member. In the process of enterprise’s external resources integration, both the formation of market ability and the accumulation of technological innovation ability require the effective mobilization of social capital resources of entrepreneurs.Thirdly, entrepreneur’s social capital can improve the enterprises technology innovation by increasing the enterprises’ dynamic capability.The results show that most of the enterprises’ dynamic capability does play an intermediary role in the influence process by entrepreneur’s social capital, that is, the intermediation of market dynamic capability of enterprise in innovation performance mechanism affected by cognitive dimension is not supported empirically. Entrepreneurs can improve the effect of innovation performance by means of improving the dynamic capability. Obviously, the more content of the social network is, the more extensive innovative idea spread of entrepreneurs using network and the more likely the enterprise technology innovation awareness is formed within the wealthy social network. In addition, the network trust is the premise of interested parry’s cooperation. Regardless of how the competitive environment change and how the enterprise technology innovation strategy adjust and reform, entrepreneurs and interested members of the network can support each other and seek innovative development.Finally, the regulating effect of entrepreneurship on the relationship between entrepreneur’s social capital and dynamic capability is analyzed and entrepreneurship is found to play a different role in the improvement of entrepreneur’s social capital.In explaining the relationship between entrepreneur’s social capital and dynamic capability, existing researches pay less attention to the subjective initiative performance. This work introduces the entrepreneurship as the internal situation component into the theoretical model and explores the effect of entrepreneurship on the relationship between entrepreneur’s social capital and dynamic capability. Entrepreneurship which is the innovation orientation of enterprises will influence excavation and utilization of resource occupied by entrepreneur’s social capital. The statistical analysis found that entrepreneurship doesn’t positively adjust the effect of structural dimension on technology dynamic capability and the effect of cognitive dimension on the market dynamic capability. However, it does support the effect of structural dimension on market dynamic capability, the effect of relation dimension and cognitive dimension on technology dynamic capability and market dynamic capability.Comparing with existing research results, this work has following innovations and development.(1) Research logic innovationThis study explains the black-box mechanism between entrepreneur’s social capital and enterprise’s technology innovation improvement and constructs the theoretical logic "entrepreneur’s social capital, dynamic capability and enterprise’s technology innovation’. The main logic frame is:first from the practice, can enterprise dynamic capability create better performance; second, as a key learning agent, entrepreneur plays a role from holding knowledge resource and capital resources to enterprise’s technology innovation improvement, depending on the market dynamic capability and technology dynamic capability; it is a fact that entrepreneur holds the social capital, but it doesn’t mean the required resource for the enterprise innovation. The main reason is the performance of entrepreneur’s subjective activity, that is, entrepreneurship.(2) Key construct innovationThere are three key constructs in the logic main line the first innovation point states:first, the construct of entrepreneur’s social capital in the performance of enterprise’s technology innovation; second, the construct of social capital of entrepreneur in the market dynamic capability and technology dynamic capability; third, the construct of the relationship between the social capital and technological innovation performance improvement by market dynamic capability and technology dynamic capability. These three constructs are the main line of this research. In fact, in order to achieve the above key constructs, this study is based on two specific concept definitions:(1) Clarifying the concept definition and dimensions of classification of social capital of the entrepreneur; (2) different types of social capital dimensions with different black box mechanism affect the innovation performance respectively. Furthermore, according to the functions of different dynamic capabilities, the dynamic capability is divided into two categories, the market dynamic capability and technology dynamic capability. And the role of the two kinds of organizational capabilities in the promotion of enterprise’s innovation performance is investigated.(3) Research entry point innovationIn view of situation that the existing researches pay less attention to the impact of contextual factors on the relationship between social capital and enterprise innovation performance, this study is to introduce the entrepreneurship as the contextual factor into the theoretical model and explore the relationship between entrepreneur’s social capital and dynamic capability. Entrepreneurship is the practice, process and decision making activity of the new entry behaviors. It represents the innovation orientation of the enterprise and to some extent will affect the development and perfection of the resource mobilization ability of social capital. At the same time, it also deepens the understanding of the role of social capital, and provides a new starting point for entrepreneurs to promote technological innovation based on the structural resources through the initiative of entrepreneurs. These will enrich the theoretical research results of entrepreneur’s social network.(4) Research conclusions innovationThis study draws some meaningful conclusions that the social capital has a positive regulatory effect on the enterprise technology dynamic capabilities not only in the more intense entrepreneurial innovation atmosphere, and the cognitive dimension doesn’t enhance the level of market dynamics in a situation of strong entrepreneurship. This conclusion not only responds to related research conclusions of the social capital as the stock of capital, namely that the frequent and dense interpersonal interaction of social capital structure exists "hard" requirement, but also tells that relationship and cognitive capital has the meaning of "soft" attribute. Furthermore, the goal of the entrepreneur’s efforts should meet the requirements of the "hard" index, such as the degree of close contact and the quantity, to facilitate the formation of the second-order condition of enterprise’s technical ability. Similarly, whether the entrepreneur has the entrepreneurship or not is also important. If the innovation measures within common language between the entrepreneurs and the external customers, suppliers are neglected, it is not conducive to improving the enterprise’s market dynamic capabilities. This study not only enriches the research in the field of entrepreneur’s social capital, but also understands the promotion of entrepreneur’s social capital to enterprise’s dynamic capability from the perspective of contingency and provides a new perspective to explore the enterprise’s innovation behavior.