The Entrepreneur's Social Capital And Development Of The Small And Medium-sized Private Enterprises In Urban China: A Case Study In Wuhan City

Private enterprises are fresh troops of national economy in China. How to accelerate the development of private enterprises has become an important problem in Chinese society. In the drastic market competition, the capacity and resource of the owner of private enterprise is crucial for the private enterprise. Base on such consideration, the author interviewed 31 owners (they are selected randomly) in Wuhan City, and tried to study the informal performing mechanism of the owners' social relations network by structural interview.According to social capital theory and structural-functionalism theory, the author's hypothesis as below: The ownership property and vocation attribute of private enterprise determine the structure and character of owner's social relation network; Educational degree, work experience, bureaucratic rank and achievement motivation have important influence on the owner's social capital; The structure of relation network determines the role of different type of relation network in the development of private enterprise; The owner of private enterprise depends mostly on the relative relation network. In terms of the hypothesis, the interview emphasizes three aspects: the range and constitution of the object with whom the owner makes contact, how dose the owner establish and maintain the acquaintanceship, and the owner's evaluation on the social relations network's functions.By analysis, the author finds that the owner's educational level has high correlation with the vocational knowledge requirement of private enterprise; the owner's bureaucratic rank has high correlation with private enterprise's life course; the owner's work experience has high correlation with private enterprise's vocation; the owner's achievement motivation has high correlation with the level of development of private enterprise.In the course of analyzing, the author deeply felt that structural constrain and personal activity play important role in the constitution and mobilization of owner's social capital. The economical structure (ownership) of private enterprise determines the motive of the owner's behavior. And the vocation the private enterprise belongs to determines the owner to construct which kind of strong-tie group. With the same time, the owner behaves actively to construct and maintain the relation to match theenterprise's needs.Data tells the author that all the groups (there are four strong-tie groups: subordinates, customers, relatives, friends, who have close relation with the owner) tend toward high educational level and special technology. In addition, most of subordinates and customers take up crucial positions. The owner interacts with them in nearly same form, but information communicated is so different. And who can solve the financial problem for private enterprise, which is relied on by the owner mostly. Although the owner sets a high value upon intercourse equally, but this doesn't mean that he can tolerate any threat to his authority.It is obvious that each group has its specific contribution to private enterprise. As a whole, relatives provide maximal contribution in capital support and emotion support, and customers' dedications focus on business support and message support. If control the other factors and just examine the effect of folks, the author find that for folks-relied enterprises, relatives are in support of capital and affection more than all; but for non-folks-relied enterprises, subordinates and customers play more important role than friends and relatives. The author also finds that private enterprises get little assistance from government, bank and other facilitating agency. So social relation network of the owner has significant position for private enterprise in China today.In the end of the report, the author discussed some relative problems: What is the relation between the enterprise's social capital and the entrepreneur's social capital? Why does the enterprise's social capital be so important in the economic activity of the private enterprise? Does the entrepreneur b...