Research On Shareholder Human Capital,Equity Structure And Venture Performance Of High-technology Small And Medium Enterprises

As an important force in promoting China's economic development and technological innovation,high-technology small and medium enterprises have received a lot of attention from academic research.Internal resources,especially those provided by shareholders who often act as both founders and management team members,play a fundamental role in the growth of these firms.However,so far insufficient research has been conducted to reveal the mechanism behind these shareholders' impact on hightechnology small and medium enterprises.Based on the current status of high-technology small and medium enterprises in China,this dissertation explores the relationship among shareholder human capital,equity structure and performance of these ventures.Relying on the differences of shareholder composition and corporate governance between high-technology small and medium enterprises and mature public firms,this study is able to analyze the mechanism of human capital,which has been difficult for previous researches to determine,and also the antecedents of new ventures' equity structure,which is rarely touched upon by corporate governance studies.A theoretical model of “Resource-Structure-Performance” is also proposed in this dissertation to discuss the interaction between shareholder human capital and equity structure,as well as their impact on the growth of high-technology small and medium enterprises.This dissertation utilizes data on individual shareholder's background,equity allocation and performance of more than one thousand high-technology small and medium enterprises between 2005 and 2014 to construct a unique database that could comprehensively reflect shareholder human capital's effect on these ventures,and also applies multiple statistical analyses to carry out in-depth empirical testing on corresponding research hypotheses.The results show that,specific shareholder human capital,particularly technical capabilities demonstrated by patents,are more valuable to high-technology small and medium enterprises and could bring more shares to the shareholders;diverse combinations of various types of shareholder human capital would result in different effects on share allocation and venture performance,for example appropriate differences in shareholders' education background could provide performance-boosting complementarity to the firm;an utterly equal equity split would lead to a decline in high-technology small and medium enterprises' performance,as well as lower evaluation from other stakeholders;the inverted U-shape relationship between share concentration and venture performance,along with opposite moderating effects of shareholder functional diversity and firm age,show that extreme equity structures should be avoided by high-technology small and medium enterprises,and the interrelationship among shareholders would become more influential when shareholder functional diversity is high or when firm age is low;the mismatch between equity and investment regarding technical shareholders would have a significant and long-term negative effect on the performance of high-technology small and medium enterprises.Through investigating the mechanism of human capital,influencing factors of equity structure as well as the main corporate governance issues within high-technology small and medium enterprises,this dissertation makes theoretical contributions to human capital theory,corporate governance research and entrepreneurship research,meanwhile provides practical guidance to help high-technology small and medium enterprises achieve better performance through identifying valuable human capital,targeting suitable ownership structure and applying dynamic equity allocation.