140 / 274
經理人外部連結對新興產業內公司之表現影響
140
supplier relations (Uzzi, 1997) and interfirm learning (Kraatz, 1998). The external
connections of founders, particularly founders of new ventures, enable them to identify new
business opportunities, obtain resources at below market prices, and secure legitimacy from
external stakeholders. However, social capital also entails costs and risks. For example,
sometimes ties are too costly to maintain. In addition, strong solidarity with ingroup
members may reduce the flow of new ideas into the group, causing inertia and blindness
(Powell and Smith-Doerr, 1994; Gargiulo and Benassi, 1999).
To evaluate the potential benefits, costs, and risks associated with social capital,
scholars often refer to the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital.
Essentially, the structure of social capital defines the structure of individuals’ social
interactions with others (Adler and Kwon, 2002). The relational dimension of social capital
reflects the potential trust and trustworthiness between individuals within social interaction
(Barney and Hansen, 1994; Uzzi, 1996). The cognitive dimension of social capital relates to
the development of a shared vision and common values between the donor and recipient
because of their similar backgrounds and resources (Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993;
Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Thus, the crucial external measures for an individual actor’s
social capital comprises tie strength, size, quality, density, and diversity, network centrality,
and structural holes (Granovetter, 1973; Freeman, 1979; Burt, 1983, 1992).
However, our understanding of the relationship between managerial ties and firm
performance is incomplete. The literature pays considerable attention to the firm
performance impacts of board interlocks and the personal connections of founders. However,
the empirical evidence of these studies are often contradictory (Peng and Luo, 2000; Stam et
al., 2014). Moreover, past studies have emphasized the direct impact of social capital,
overlooking how the synergy between social capital and human capital influences firm
performance. Because social capital can be a “facilitator” of both execution- and innovation-
oriented task performance (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998; Moran, 2005), discussing the value
of managers’ social capital without jointly considering their managerial capability in
implementing tasks could result in the problem of identification. More critically, we still lack
empirical support for the assertion that the impact of social capital depends on industry
conditions (Stam et al., 2014). Thus, this study focuses on managers and examines how the
synergy between their social and human capital influences firm performance in an emerging
industry. Thus, we first develop propositions describing how managers’ social and human
capital can jointly influence firm performance and then we develop hypotheses.