Research On The Influence Of The Social Capital Of Entrepreneurial Team To New Firm Growth In Technology-based New Ventures

In the process of technology-based entrepreneurship, it is difficult for one entrepreneur to master all of the technical and management capacity that is necessary for entrepreneurship and the importance of entrepreneurial team is prominent. Therefore, in the early days, most of the technology-based firms are created by teams. The research about entrepreneurial team of technology-based new ventures is becoming hot spots of theoretical circles. In the condition that market competition becomes much severer and external environment becomes much more complicated, resources acquisition from external environment becomes a major challenge for entrepreneurial team and it is also an important factor that affects new firm growth. This study chooses entrepreneurial team of technology-based new venture as object of study, exploring the new firm growth from the perspective of social capital.There are two views about the study of social capital. One is the bridging view, focusing primarily on the external linkages of the actor, and calling resources that obtained from the actor'external linkages as external social capital. The other is the bonding view, focusing primarily on the interaction among members. This study selects an external perspective, and social capital of entrepreneurial team is defined as "the sum of the actual and potential resources obtained by members of entrepreneurial team through the network of relationship in their external business environment". Nahapiet&Ghoshal first created a theoretical framework to measure organizational social capital from structural dimension relational dimension and cognitive dimension. Based on their framework, J.Liao&H.Welsch developed a social capital scale for general enterprise and explored the influence of social capital to firm growth. Based on their study, firstly, the paper proposes relevant research hypotheses, and constructs the theoretical model of the influence of social capital of entrepreneurial team in technology-based new venture on new firm growth. Then, according to the characteristics of technology-based new ventures, combining entrepreneurial team structure characteristics, the paper revises J.Liao&H.Welsch social capital scale, and develops social capital scale of entrepreneurial team that is suitable for technology-based new venture, exploring the influence of social capital of entrepreneurial team to new firm growth. In addition, the paper also explores the influence of control variables, such as the age, gender, education, business experience, entrepreneurial team size and so on, to the level of social capital and new firm growth.Based on an useful sample of 102 questionnaires of 31 entrepreneurial teams, using SPSS 17.0 for statistical analysis, the paper reaches the following conclusions:(1) entrepreneurial team'social capital and its dimensions have positive correlation with new firm growth;(2)structural capital and cognitive capital cannot forecast efficiently new firm growth; while relational capital can forecast efficiently new firm growth;(3)in technology-based new venture, education and business experience have significant adjustment function to social capital of entrepreneurial team and business experience have significant adjustment function to new firm growth. According to these conclusions, entrepreneurial team can promote new firm growth by improving the level of social capital. Based on these findings, the paper suggests technology-based new venture:strengthening exchange and cooperation with actors such as government, financial institutions, entrepreneurial park in their social relation networks; strengthening education and training of scientific and technological talents; formulating policies to attract high technology talents.