| Facing with challenges of economic globalization, it is an urgent affair to vigorously develop high-tech industry and promote construction of an innovative country. By supporting entrepreneurial activity of high-tech firms, venture capital plays an indispensable role of promoting the development of an innovative economy, economic growth and employment expansion. Venture capital started relatively later in China, but has been developed rapidly in recent years. Until the end of 2010, the total capital managed by venture capital companies, which are put on record, has reached 150 billion yuan in China, that has increased by 54% than that of last year. Compared with other developed countries in the world, there is a broad space for China to develop venture capital in future.Hence, venture capital has attracted much attention of many scholars and has been a hot topic in theory researches and business world. However, there are still some shortcomings in current researches:First, in other countries, especially in the U.S., researches on venture capital are centered on its operational process, which focused on "technology" level, such as venture capital's organizational structure, assessment procedure, contract mechanism, and mathematical analysis of investment tools, while they do relatively less researches on mechanism of how venture capital influences the performance of venture-backed technology firm. Second, compared with other countries, China does fewer researches and most of researches are focused on macro-level, the researches on micro-level are rare. Third, researches on venture capital in China emphasize more on conceptual researches and less empirical researches. Therefore, this dissertation researches on venture capital company's activities and venture-backed technology firm, first defines the concept and structure of venture capital company's activities, then applies firm capability theory and agency theory to analyze thoroughly how venture capital company's activities influence the performance of venture-backed technology firm, at last discusses the moderating effect of trust in this mechanism. The main work is done as follows: (1) Literature review and theoretical development. By reviewing details of venture capital, firm capability theory and corporate governance, shortcomings in researches can be found. The argument foundation can be shaped by analyzing the construction of venture capital company's activities.(2) Exploratory case studies and proposing of theoretical framework. On the base of numerous investigations, four different kinds of firms are chosen for deep interview; with exploratory research approaches, the mechanism model of impact of venture capital company's activities on venture-backed technology firm has been built primarily; that provides practical idea for researches in future.(3) Model construction and empirical analysis of mechanism that venture capital company's activities influence venture-backed technology firm's performance. On the base of exploratory case studies, the conceptual model of impact of venture capital company's activities on venture-backed technology firm's performance has been established. By doing questionnaires, empirical researches are done with exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and path analysis. Eventually, the mechanism model of venture capital company's activities on venture-backed technology firm is built and confirmed.(4) The relationship between venture capital company's activities and venture-backed technology firm is related to trust. On the basis of the above mechanism of the model, this dissertation researches further the influence mechanism of venture capital company's activities on venture-backed technology firm under different types of trust situations, with trust as a moderating variable. And through questionnaires, using some methods, like multiple linear regression analysis, to verify and revise the moderate effect model.Based on the above exploratory and testing processes, following conclusions can be reached:(1) Venture capital company's activities have positive effects on performance of venture-backed technology firm. Venture capital has characteristics of high-risk and high-yield; in order to secure input cost and improve investment revenue, venture capital organizations will interfere with management activities of the enterprises they invest and try to promote their performance by reducing agent cost and increasing corporate value.(2) Venture capital company's activities influence on firm performance partly through mediating role of corporate governance and firm capability of venture-backed technology firm. On the base of literature review and analysis of exploratory examples, the questionnaires on venture-backed technology firm have been planed and completed. By doing structural equation modeling based on data of 209 enterprises, we find there are three ways for impact of venture capital company's activities on firm performance. The monitoring activities of venture capital influences indirectly firm performance through mediating role of corporate governance. The fund input of venture capital not only has direct effects on firm performance, but also influences firm performance indirectly by influencing firm capability. Value-added activities of venture capital will have direct effects on firm performance, and influence firm performance indirectly through mediating role of firm capability. All of these construct the effect mechanism of venture capital company's activities on firm performance.(3) Empirical study has tested moderating role of trust on venture capital company's activities and venture-backed technology firm. Due to the different level of trust, venture capital company's activities have different influence on venture-backed technology firm, trust as an informal governance mechanism between the firms decides whether venture capital company's activities can affect firm performance. The empirical study of this dissertation shows that the higher the calculation-based trust is, the more significantly the monitoring activities of venture capital company affects the level of corporate governance of venture-backed technology firm, and more significantly the value-added activities of venture capital company affects the level of firm capability. However, when the relationship-based trust is high, the influence to the increasing of firm capability given by value-added activities is not so distinct, which shows that venture-backed technology firm can't get the high value-added services relying on the good relationship with venture capital company. Because as the large amounts of capital enters the venture capital industry, the capabilities of venture capital company are not the same. Therefore the venture-backed technology firm should try to choose the helpful and capable venture capital company which can help to improve the firm capabilities among them.The above researches strengthen the understanding of impact of venture capital on venture-backed firm. Throughout the whole, this dissertation tries to make some innovation in the following three aspects:(1) By deep and comprehensive analysis of effect mechanism of venture capital company's activities on venture-backed technology firm's performance, the essential process that venture capital affects venture-backed technology firm has been demonstrated. The traditional researches either focus on the effects of corporate governance on firm performance or effects of venture capital on corporate governance of venture-backed technology firm. Also some scholars have analyzed and explained specifically the relationships among venture capital company's behavior, firm capability and growth of high-tech enterprises. On the base of exploratory researches and literature review, the dissertation constructs the conceptual model with a combination of venture capital company's activities, corporate governance, firm capability and firm performance for the first time and brings this interrelation into a comprehensive analytical framework to show how venture capital company's activities affect venture-backed technology firm's performance.(2) Empirical study has tested mediating effects of corporate governance and firm capability between venture capital company's activities and venture-backed technology firm. After building the conceptual model among the relationships of venture capital company's activities, firm capability, corporate governance and firm performance and by doing questionnaires, and statistic analysis of large samples, the positive correlations of mediating effects between venture capital company's activities and venture-backed technology firm do exist. The value-added activities of venture capital create much more value for the enterprises by strengthening firm capabilities, while agent cost is reduced by more monitoring activities. All of these promote the improvement of firm performance. These discoveries have some instructive meaning for theory and practice of venture capital.(3) Revealing the moderating effect of trust in the influence of venture-backed technology firm given by venture capital company's activities. This dissertation divides trust into the calculation-based trust and the relationship-based trust, and researches the diversity of the influence mechanisms which the venture capital company's activities gives to venture-backed technology firm under different types of trust. It reveals the moderating effect of trust and provides theoretical basis of how the venture-backed technology firms get more value from the support of venture capital.The researches of the impact of venture capital on venture-backed technology firm are very challenging, but very valuable. However, due to limitations of time, ability and energy, there are still some deficiencies in this research. Therefore, in the last chapter of this dissertation we summarize and discuss further work needed to be done in future.
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