Enhancing product innovativeness in SMEs: the role of owners’ bonding social capital, owners’ bridging behaviours and mobilized social capital
研究基于捷克286家中小企业调查数据，发现所有者联结型社会资本通过桥接行为间接影响产品创新性，且动员型社会资本起调节作用，为中小企业提升创新性提供指导。
This paper provides a novel perspective on bonding social capital and product innovativeness applied to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), drawing on a two-stage network mobilization perspective. Applying Hayes’ PROCESS analysis to survey data from a randomly drawn sample of 286 Czech SMEs, the findings show an indirect, contingent relationship between proxies for the structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of owners’ bonding social capital – including family involvement, owners’ trust, and owners’ collective orientation – and SME product innovativeness. Study results also support a moderated mediation model in which owners’ bridging behaviours (activities to access external social resources for the firm) mediate, and the firm’s mobilized social capital (using such resources) moderates this relationship. By doing so, the study sheds light on past contradictions regarding the effect of bonding social capital on product innovation. It also introduces a cross-level theoretical perspective of network mobilization in the SME context that considers owners’ group and firm-level social capital variables to predict product innovativeness. The findings highlight the importance of fostering social ties among SME owners and management and ensuring strategic use of external contacts to enhance firm innovativeness.