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Similarly, because of the organizational commitment of stewards (Davis et al., 1997),
family social capital may entice family members to support the decisions made by their
board of directors and managers. In contrast, a lack of social capital may limit the
effectiveness of a participative governance structure since distrust can cause coordination
and control problems that undermine the family firm (Steier, 2001). As a result, family social
capital may offer the necessary support for participative governance, thus enhancing a family
firm’s corporate entrepreneurship.
The relational dimension of social capital consists of the resources created through
personal relationships, including: trust, norms, obligations and identity (Nahapiet and
Ghoshal, 1998). These personal bonds create unique and often lasting attachments among
individuals that encourage family members to act as stewards of their firm; they are
motivated to fulfill organizational goals and entrepreneurial initiatives (Tsui, Pearce, Porter,
and Tripoli, 1997). Besides, personal bonds further help family members to put aside their
own interests, prevent nearsightedness and focus on the goals of the family firm. This
synergy between the family members and firm may thereby facilitate factors aiming to
enhance explorative activities that have longer term payoffs.
In addition, family social capital may magnify the positive influence long-term
orientation has on explorative activities. When managers exercise careful stewardship over
the well-being and continuity of the family firm, the family members with higher social
capital are more capable of offering resources, such as free labor, equity and loans to ensure
the firm’s long-term survival (Eddleston and Kellermanns, 2007; Kellermanns et al., 2008).
Thus, family social capital is expected to strengthen the proposed positive effects of
comprehensive strategic decision making, participative governance and long-term orientation
on family firms’ explorative orientation. The above arguments lead to the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: The positive effect of managerial stewardship orientation on explorative
orientation becomes greater among firms with higher levels of social
capital.
3. Method
3.1 Data and Sample
In order to examine the proposed hypotheses, this study focuses on small and medium
sized family firms in Taiwan due to the following reasons. Firstly, Taiwan is a newly