The Impact Of Corporate Social Capital On Innovation Performance

Along with the approaching of knowledge economy era, scholars began to studythe problems on corporate competition and growth from the aspect of internalknowledge accumulation. Prahalad and Hamel (1990), as the representatives of manyscholars, believe that the corporate growth depends on abundance of heterogeneousresources from internal, at the same time, these resources is the foundation for thecorporates to create and maintain sustainable competitive advantage. Even since then,to explain the corporate competitive advantages from the aspect of knowledge hasbecome the main trend opinion in management research. Knowledge-based viewpoints out those lots of knowledge transfer provide the corporates with knowledgeand experience from each other to get new knowledge from outside. This has playedan important role in corporate innovation performance.Speaking of the corporate in the competition globalization environment, it ismore important to pay attention to the importance of corporate knowledge transfer.Corporate needs not only obtain knowledge from internal, but also make use ofexternal transfer knowledge. Research shows knowledge-transfer has positive effectboth on innovation result and the process. Knowledge transfer can promote theredistribution of existing resources or create new resources combination, which couldproduce innovation performance (Song, Droge, Hanvanich&Calantone,2005).Therefore, the corporate knowledge transfer will realize the corporate competitiveadvantage and improve corporate’s innovation performance (Argote&Ingram,2000).Social capital is a kind of shared resources of an individual or organizationdepending on the social relationship, which is particularly significant when theknowledge acquisition and transfer happen among the member of a relationship network (Inkpen&Tsang,2005). Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) found that socialcapital affect merger and exchange of tacit and explicit knowledge amongorganizations, so as to promote formation of intellectual capital. Therefore, theresearch on knowledge transfer cannot be separated from the social capital, whileChina’s economic system transformation and cultural background provide excellentenvironment for related research. Chinese culture values relationships a lot. Forindividuals, relationship is informal links among people, which is also the guaranteeof smooth social transaction. Also, in the organization level, relationship also plays adecisive role. For an organization, the social relationship of members is valuable,scarce and inimitable. It is the source of competitive advantages transformation(Tsang,1998). Therefore, social capital has become the economic action criterion ofour enterpris, and has special value and function in China’s economic transformation(Bian Yanjie, Qiu Haixiong,2000).This paper puts the corporate social capital, knowledge transfer and innovationperformance into one analytical framework and makes a further exploration on therelationship of them. The paper mainly studies the problems below: the influence ofcorporate social capital on knowledge transfer, the influence of Knowledge transferon the innovation performance, the influence of corporate social capital on theinnovation performance, the intermediary role of Knowledge transfer in the influenceof corporate social capital on the innovation performance.This research makes a comprehensive and systematical explanation of theproblem mentioned above, using the relevant theoretical deduction and data empiricalanalysis method. This research mainly developed by the following several steps:1. Theory inference and observation summary, construct the research model andbuild framework.The paper makes a systematical and comprehensive organization of the relatedpapers on Corporate social capital, knowledge transfer and innovation performanceand clear the core concepts of Social capital, corporate social capital, knowledgetransfer and innovation performance. On the basic of researching plentiful papers, theauthor made investigations, surveys and interviews on the corporates from Shanghai,Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, etc... The selected corporations are mainly from high-tech industry. By combining the concepts of Social capital, knowledge transferand innovation performance, the paper constructs the comprehensive model framewhich takes the knowledge transfer as the mediation variable to act on therelationship between corporate social capital and innovation performance.2. On-site interviews and questionnaire survey, personnel selection and datacollectionIn the development of the paper, the author, under the guidance from the tutor,made deep interviews with administrators from several corporates, especially fromthe development or innovation management department. The interviews are about theproblems on the knowledge transfer and innovation performance in corporate fromChina, as well as the influence of corporate social capital. Based on the result of theinterviews, the author designed and gave out the questionnaires; at last regain206pieces of valid questionnaires.3. Statistical analysis and empirical test, hypothesis testing and model test.After collecting the questionnaires, the author tested the hypothesis on thetheoretical medal, using proper Analysis statistical tools and research methods. Toprocess the collected data, this paper uses the following research methods:Descriptive statistics analysis, reliability and validity analysis, correlation analysis,multiple regression analysis and structural equation model test, etc... This researchuses SPSS20.0and AMOS20.0as the analysis software. After the empirical test ofeach hypothesis and the general frame of the research model, the paper gets thefollowing conclusions:(1) The strength of Relationship network connection has positive correlation withknowledge transfer; the density of Relationship network has positive correlation withknowledge transfer; the stability of Relationship network has positive correlation withknowledge transfer. These testify the positive correlation between the structuraldimension of corporate social capital and knowledge transfer.(2) Trust has positivecorrelation with knowledge transfer; commitment and expectation has positivecorrelation with knowledge transfer. These testify the positive correlation between therelational dimension of corporate social capital and knowledge transfer.(3) Thecommon invasion has positive correlation with knowledge transfer; the shared platform of language and knowledge has positive correlation with knowledge transfer.These testify the positive correlation between the cognitive dimension of corporatesocial capital and knowledge transfer.(4) The knowledge transfer has positivecorrelation with innovation performance.At last, the conclusion is: Corporate social capital influence the innovationperformance via the knowledge transfer. That is to say, knowledge transfer plays amediating role between the corporate social capital and innovation performance.This paper researches the relationship between corporate social capital andinnovation performance, as well as the mediating function of knowledge transfer. Thepaper attempts to make a theory innovation from the following three aspects:1. This research constructs the model of corporate social capital, knowledgetransfer and innovation performance, and makes a further enrichment of the researchon the relationship of corporate social capital and innovation performance. Theexisting researches about corporate social capital are mainly referred to the literaturereview and qualitative research, while the research on the relationship amongcorporate social capital, knowledge transfer and innovation performance is notcomprehensive. The former researches mainly care relationship between twovariables among the three. This paper begins with the intense relationship among thethree factors: the corporate social capital, knowledge transfer and innovationperformance, and further discovers that corporate social capital not only directlyeffects innovation performance, also effects innovation performance via theintervening variable-knowledge transfer. So it is necessary to put the three variablesin one framework to carry on the analysis, which is helpful to make research on themechanism of how corporate social capital affects the innovative performance from anew angle.2. This study provides the empirical support for exploratory and developmentaltheory research. The research on social capital origins from the western countries,under the concern of foreign academic circles, the scholars discuss the problem fromdifferent research angles. Meanwhile, knowledge transfer and corporate innovation isalready a common behavior in the western corporates, so is the related research.However, we need to notice that, research on the relationship between enterprise social capital and innovation performance from the angle of knowledge transfer israre. The existing researches are mainly based on the developed countries, while theresearch based on china is rare. Though there are some related researches on socialcapital and performance, the knowledge transfer related researches are lesser.Therefore, this paper provides the china-based empirical support for these researches.3. The paper research and developed the corporate social capital scale based onthe research of Nahapie and Ghoshal（1998）, Szulnski（1996）, Yli-Renko et al.（2001）, Inkpen and Tsang（2005）, as well as the knowledge transfer scale based onthe point of Ramasamy et al.（2006）, Maurer et al.（2011）and the innovationperformance scale based on research of Cooke, Clifton（2003） and Zhang Fanghua（2004）. These scales are all testified in the reliability and validity. The paperprovides the following researchers, who will do the quantitative research on corporatesocial capital, knowledge transfer and innovation performance, with theoretical andempirical analysis foundation.In spite of the significant conclusions made from theorical and empirical aspectsin this paper, the limitation of objective conditions (time and cost) and the capacity ofthe researcher cannot be ignored. The limitation in the research progress and theconclusion is inevitable, which depends on the following study to improve.