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Small And Medium-sized Private Business Owners, Social Network Research

Posted on:2010-12-31Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y ChenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119360302957712Subject:Social psychology
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Private enterprises are products of China's economic restructuring in China's reform and opening up policy. The enterprises have been developed into quick reinforcements of national economy during the last three decades. It is undeniable that the small and medium-sized private enterprises which contribute significantly to the country's economic development.Researches about small and medium-sized private enterprises vary substantially among different disciplines, and even within the same subject, different schools also have different research priorities. In fact, the reasons of the fast growth of small and medium-sized private enterprises result from complex factors including technology, industry, geography, management, and so on. Although private enterprises have attracted much attention from socio-economic research fields, surveying the academic researchs ,we may find : Firstly, researches from an economic point of view are the majority, on contrary, from the sociological point of view are less; Secondly, the study of capital and capital accumulation are both core of Marxist political economics which is a series of ripe theories, but the researchers focus on social capital still can not come to a general consensus; Thirdly, the current studies lack of empirical study.The growth of the small and medium-sized private enterprises has two fatal adequate resources as guarantees. One is resources from its own, the other resources must be get from the social network.The enterprises owners' social networks have become essential pathes for the resources. Since the contemporary economic environment in China is constict and disordered to some extent, the number of small business owners' social relations is crucial for the development of enterprises, therefore business owners'networks are often associated with the success or failure of private enterprisesToday, scholars begin to pay attention that how private entrepreneurs' social relations affact performance. It is precisely because business owners naturally pursue profit, they try every means to achieve the goals, including the mobilization of enough resources by private network.In this paper, we take social networks and social capital theory as the background, the use of social network as an analytical perspective, and start the analysis from the behavior of the private business owners in the perspective of social network theory, and use local guanxi, renqing, face as tools of reasearch. There are three points in this article, constituting the overall framework:First of all, with first-hand materials getting from South and the North China, the paper puts forward a concept "guiren network"in order to highlight the Chinese characteristics about social network. guiren network is defined as a aggregation including entrepreneurs and actors from external of enterprises that are able to provide enterprises with necessary information or scarce resources. The actors might offer essential assistance or make outstanding contributions to entreprises.Secondly, the paper outlines the contemporary Chinese small and medium-sized business owners' social network profiles and describes the paths and the dynamic process when business owners build social networks.Finally, from a sociological point of view, combined with examples, the paper analyses small and medium-sized business owners behavior from the cultural dimension and analyses results from the social structure dimension.The paper adopts a loop research mode"Literature Review - Empirical Analysis - Theory" First reviewed theories of social capital from both economics and sociology preceding researches. Followed by analysing the owners'behavior in the light of informal relations, the paper depicts how they build the network. Typical enterprises are been used to illustrate the points. The final analysis explain the thoughts of entrepreneurs.We committed to giving advices to the government, hoping the government constructs and expands social networks to promote the network members' mutual trust and cooperation.The contribution of this paper as follows:1. Based on the structured interview from 29 private entreperneurs, the paper put forward a concept of "guiren" social network as well as a series of subordinate concept.2. By analyzed the representative cases, the paper expatiats on how can entrepreneurs open up and construct the relationships with guiren, at the same time, the paper also shows how can the guiren network change to social capital and how social capital can change to economy capital.3. Explaining the reasons why private entrepreneurs build guiren network from a combination of the cultural and structural dual perspectives.It is obvious that guiren network has enhanced the management capacity ofprivate entrepreneurs and advanced the economic benefit. But we should also see that there are bribery behavior and unhealthy intercourse patterns in the process of establishing guiren network and mobilizing the resources indeed. The private entrepreneurs and the Chinese government should make great efforts to get rid of the badness property and utilize guiren network effectively under laws and regulations.
Keywords/Search Tags:the entrepreneur of small and medium-sized private entreprise, guiren network, social network, social capital, guanxi
PDF Full Text Request
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