The Influence Of Top Management Team Social Capital On Competitive Strategies And Growth Performance Of New Ventures

New ventures,as the important sources of innovation,employment,productivity and driving forces of national economy,social progress and revolution,have provided the society with a large number of jobs.However,compared to the existing business which has certain viability,new ventures have to face the liabilities of newness and survival crisis.In the area of strategic research,the explanation of organizational behavior is focused on macro factors such as economy and technology.Even though some studies have considered the strategic progress,it is generally regarded as information and decision flows and is still ignoring the human factors involved.Therefore the area of strategic research is controversial for lack of micro basis.The upper echelons theory has to some extent made up for the deficiencies in strategic area.However,the upper echelons theory is restricted to endogenous variables within TMT,while ignoring the external social attributes and giving little attention to vital social mechanisms that exert influence in organizational context,which indicated that the combination of upper echelons and social capital theory is necessary.The historical and cultural tradition and the context of transition economy have decided the relationship is of great significance to Chinese enterprises.As the most important human capital in an enterprise,TMT must rely on their own social networks to gain resources necessary for enterprise growth,which could compensate for environmental uncertainties and risks arising from internal insufficient resources in the early stage of enterprise development.At the same time,TMT's social networks are also an important source of the support of strategic decisions.This article is trying to discuss the following questions through theoretical and empirical studies.First,Is the top management team social capital showing new features with the change of current socio-economic environment?Second,Will the different types of TMT social capital show significant impact on competitive strategies and growth performance of enterprises?If so,which kind of social capital is playing a bigger role?Our research used researched methods of literature research,interpretation of analysis,combined empirical analysis and normative analysis.First,we reviewed the classical theory and up-to-date research achievements at home and from abroad of upper echelons,social capital,competitive strategy,new ventures growth and some other theories relevant to our themes.Then we explored the mechanism in which TMT social capital exert influence on competitive strategies and firm growth and put forward hypotheses and build a theoretical model of this article.Finally,based on the GEM listed companies we gathered publicly available data from 2011 to 2013 from 90 companies,and then use statistical software such as SPSS and Stata to test hypothesis,we reached the following conclusions:First,the stock of TMT vertical capital and technical capital in market-developed areas was significantly weaker than those in market-underdeveloped areas.Second,TMT social capital has certain influence on new venture competitive strategies and firm growth performance,and the degree of interpretation that TMT social capital on competitive strategies is lower than that on firm growth performance,and the degree of interpretation that TMT social capital on differentiation strategy is lower than that on cost-leadership strategy.Third,TMT non-market social capital may not bring positive contribution to new venture growth performance,but through the development of non-market social capital,the implementation of differentiation strategy or cost leadership strategy will be promoted.Eventually,TMT market social capital may not promote implementation of differentiation strategy or cost leadership strategy,but in a way it will promote the growth performance of new ventures.