Although new ventures’ competitive positioning and their founders’ social networks are both recognized as important in the context of transition economies, not much is known about their multiplicative effect on performance. We build on the strategic management literature and social network theory to develop theoretical predictions about the role of competitive strategies and social capital for entrepreneurial performance. These are tested with survey data from Bulgaria. We find that both the venture’s competitive strategic positioning and the founder’s networking positively influence performance. The hypothesized moderating effect of networking for the relationship between differentiation strategy and performance received only tentative support. Contrary to expectations, we find a negative moderating effect of networking for the relationship of cost leadership with performance. These results suggest that the entrepreneur’s network plays a role in shaping how strategies influence performance by possibly upholding differentiation and deemphasizing cost leadership strategy. Implications for managerial practice and public policy are discussed.
Social Capital and Entrepreneurship concludes by examining the tension between the properties of social networks used in entrepreneurship researchers' models and the limited perspective on networks available to practicing entrepreneurs.
In her explorative study that is based on data from 62 qualitative interviews, Elena Sommer examines the use of social capital for entrepreneurial activities of self-employed migrants from the former Soviet Union in Germany. She analyses what type of social capital is used by migrants as a resource for the formation and development of small businesses and how entrepreneurial social networks of migrants change over time. The study illustrates that the use of business-related social relationships of the interviewed self-employed depends on the company's market strategy as well as on access to relevant social networks.
This book highlights the role of entrepreneurship, social capital and governance for regional economic development. In recent decades, many researchers have claimed that entrepreneurship is the most critical factor in sustaining regional economic growth. However, most entrepreneurship research is undertaken without considering the fundamental importance of the regional context. Other research has emphasized the role of social capital but there are substantial problems in empirically relating measures of social capital to regional economic development. The expert contributors to this work highlight the role of governance in regional growth, an area that has so far been relatively under-researched, underpinning their findings with new theoretical and empirical evidence. They conclude that the relationship between entrepreneurship, social capital and governance in factors affecting regional economic development are complex and interdependent, and that to influence these factors and the relationship between them, policymakers must have a long-term perspective and be both patient and persistent in their efforts. This enlightening book will be of great interest to academics, students and researchers across a range of fields including regional science, regional economics, economic geography, regional planning, public policy, entrepreneurship, political science and economic sociology. Policymakers involved in regional policymaking from national down to regional and local levels will also find the book to be an illuminating read.
The concepts of social networks, social capital and trust play an increasingly central role in the social sciences. They have become indispensable conceptual tools for the analysis of post-industrial/late-modern societies, which are characterized by such features as the relative decline of formal hierarchies, the development of flexible social arrangements in the sphere of production and the extreme mobility of capital. This is the first book to study the interrelationships between these important concepts both theoretically and empirically. Drawing on empirical investigations from a range of diverse European social contexts, the contributors develop an economic sociology that builds on and extends established theoretical perspectives. The book opens with an introduction to the theoretical ideas: relating social capital to reciprocity, trust and social networks in line with current debates. The authors go on to discuss the concept of social embededdness, addressing the economic effects of social capital by examining the network and trust foundations of labour markets and investigating the structural limits of trusting networks. They conclude with an exploration of the impact of networking and the functioning of trust and social capital on the economic arrangements and performance of nascent capitalist economies in post-Communist Europe. This thematically unified collection by a team of distinguished contributors from across Europe provides an innovative and distinctive contribution to an expanding area of research.
Entrepreneurship is now unanimously considered a major engine for socio-economic development, mainly because it creates jobs and innovation. Governments around the world pay special attention to removing entrepreneurial barriers in order to support development via different policies, especially entrepreneurial finance. Developing, emerging and transition economies (DETEs) significantly differ from industrialized countries because of their specific conditions: institutions, infrastructure facilities, and bureaucratic procedures within the administrative system. Thus, firms and their entrepreneurs in and from DETEs may behave differently, particularly in terms of their financial strategies. Therefore, contextualizing is critical to better understand the relationship between entrepreneurial finance, innovation, and development in DETEs. This book provides a systematic and profound understanding of how finance, entrepreneurship, innovation, and their interactions contribute to economic development in DETEs, which cover a large number of countries in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The book mainly includes empirical studies and is divided into four parts. Part A includes four chapters which adopt a multinational approach to examine different sources and types of finance for entrepreneurship and small business in different groups of countries classified as DETEs. Part B also includes four chapters and focuses on entrepreneurial finance in specific countries belonging to the DETEs. Part C goes beyond the business scope of entrepreneurial finance and includes three chapters concerned with the relationship between finance, women's entrepreneurship, and poverty. Part D includes three chapters focusing on the comparison within developing countries as well as between developing and developed countries. This essential and comprehensive resource will find an audience amongst academics, students, educators, and practitioners, as well as policymakers and regulators.
The economics of regional clusters, where business formation, technological innovation, and the emergence of a highly-skilled labor force converge, has become a popular topic. This fascinating book applies a variety of tools and models to analyze, in depth, the formation and growth of high-tech clusters. It does this first by exploring the institutional forces that promote the failure or success of such agglomerations, and then by focusing on the dynamics of the labor force.
The role of social capital in regional development is a multifaceted topic which is studied all over the world using various methods and across numerous disciplines. It has long been evident that social capital is important for regional development, however, it is less clear how this works in practice. Do all types of social capital have the same effects and are different kinds of regions impacted in the same way? This book is the first to offer an overview of this rapidly expanding field of research and to thoroughly analyse the complex issue of social capital and regional development.
This book analyzes the social capital of the growing knowledge economy, from both theoretical and empirical points of view. The theoretical section discusses social capital as an economic concept, developing a theory of the social capital of the enterprise. The empirical section compares aspects of the social capital of three different socio-economic systems: the US, Japan and Sweden. The book discusses a number of issues for further research.
'Lee takes the oft cited belief that entrepreneurial endeavour lives and dies by the quality of the networks set in play, and subjects it to a rigorous and sustained analysis. In this he not only provides the reader with an authoritative theoretical and empirical foray into how entrepreneurs can create and sustain different forms of social capital, he does so with a strong sense of how power frames and taints its acquisition and use. Lee1s book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how in entrepreneurial activity, as in many walks of life, it is those with already established status who set the agenda by which opportunity and its pursuit is constituted'. Robin Holt, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Politics and Society, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Robert Lee drives forward the agenda of socially-situated cognition research, moving beyond a static model of entrepreneurial cognition and offering instead a dynamic, socially embedded, communication-based perspective. He breaks from the traditional focus on either the individual entrepreneurial agent or the social and institutional context of entrepreneurship and makes a serious and skilful effort to provide an integrative understanding of the entrepreneur as placed in a complex, relational and ambiguous context. Recognising that entrepreneurship is both cognitive and relational, he plays with the idea of power within legitimacy creation and through this illustrates the ultimately distributed nature of entrepreneurial processes. This book adds to the growing domain of socially-situated entrepreneurial cognition research and will appeal to those interested in understanding the connection between cognition, communication and legitimacy in the context of entrepreneurship. Jean Clarke, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, UK ‘In a very welcome contribution to the literature, Robert Lee explores the social capital mobilised by entrepreneurs and develops a communicative action approach that yields important insights into how would-be entrepreneurs achieve legitimacy through navigating the complex web of power and status relations in which they are enmeshed. This book will appeal not only to those interested in entrepreneurship, but also be a valuable reference source for those interested in the workings of social capital’. Michael Bresnen, Professor of Organisation Studies, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK This book presents a novel and intellectually stimulating account of the understudied links between entrepreneurial newcomers’ bridging ties and their networked cognition. With a paucity of research addressing cognitively specific features of networked language and conduct, The Social Capital of Entrepreneurial Newcomers explores how entrepreneurial newcomers attune their cognition when interacting with high status and powerful vertical bridges. Largely reflecting communication accommodation perspectives, the author theoretically and empirically examines entrepreneurial newcomers’ cognitive ‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’ when bridging.
