Dynamics of Social Capital and Their Performance Implications: Lessons from Biotechnology Start-ups
通过对六家新生物技术企业的纵向案例比较，研究了创业企业社会资本的配置、管理和演化如何影响绩效，发现企业需不断调整社会资本以适应资源需求变化，否则会陷入劣势。
Based on comparative longitudinal case analyses of six new biotechnology firms, this paper explores how the configuration, management, and evolution of entrepreneurial firms' social capital affect firm performance. Findings suggest that firms can realize performance benefits when their members repeatedly adapt the configuration of their social capital to changing resource needs, while inertia turns a firm's social capital into a liability. Our research provides a dynamic view of the conditions and processes that produce such inertia, allow firms to overcome it, and develop a firm's social capital to organizational advantage. A core theoretical contribution of our study is to identify and theorize how the internal organization of firms' management of relationships with external partners, through horizontal and vertical differentiation and integration, affects the dynamic of firms' social capital, adaptive capacity, and performance.