The dark side of buyer-supplier relationships: A social capital perspective

The literature on supply chain management (SCM) has consistently promoted the “bright side” of collaborative buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs). Based on the social capital argument, SCM scholars have investigated how a buyer can gain access to and leverage resources through its collaborative BSRs. Our study extends this research stream by considering the “dark side” of social capital in BSRs. It evaluates how social capital in its cognitive, relational, and structural forms contributes to or impedes value creation within BSRs. Both primary survey measures and secondary objective measures have been used in data analysis. The results show the presence of both the bright side, confirming the existing literature, and the dark side, extending the literature. There is an inverted curvilinear relationship between social capital and performance: Either too little or too much social capital can hurt performance. This study confirms that building social capital in a collaborative BSR positively affects buyer performance, but that if taken to an extreme it can reduce the buyer's ability to be objective and make effective decisions as well as increase the supplier's opportunistic behavior. Our study also examines how a buyer can delay the emergence of the dark side. It opens up new research avenues in the collaborative BSR context and suggests directions for future research and practice.     

Social capital configuration, legal bonds and performance in buyer-supplier relationships

Academics have increasingly recognized the benefits derived from social networks embedded within companies’ buyer-supplier relationships. However, prior research has only examined the influence of social capital elements on performance, either individually or in part. We propose an integrative model examining the relationships among relational, structural and cognitive dimensions of social capital, and between these dimensions and the cost and innovation performance of the firm. A sample of 163 buyer-supplier relationships is used to test the model. Regression results indicate that the relational dimension of social capital fully or partially mediates the effect of the cognitive dimension on performance, and partially mediates the link between the structural dimension, operationalized as social interaction ties, and innovation performance. Further, high levels of legal bonds were found to moderate the relationship between the relational dimension of social capital and performance outcomes. Implications for theory and managers are discussed.     

Women nascent entrepreneurs and social capital in the process of firm creation

The main objective of this research is to study gender differences in the process of firm creation, especially in the gestation stage of that process when nascent entrepreneurs carry out the promoter behaviours. A second objective is to analyse if the cognitive and structural endowments of social capital exert an influence on the promoter behaviours and on the kind of firms created by entrepreneurs of both genders. To reach the objectives, firstly, a theoretical framework will be developed and secondly, an empirical analysis starting from a sample of nascent entrepreneurs in the Seville province (southern Spain) will be carried out. Due to women entrepreneurs being considered nowadays essential for growth and development everywhere, results obtained could help to improve the efficiency of policies that lead to the promotion and consolidation of the female participation rate in entrepreneurial activity.      

营运资本管理与企业绩效关系实证研究

本文研究了营运资本政策与经营绩效的关系,通过对中国零售业、制造业（以家电业为例）、建筑业中的上市公司分不同行业进行实证分析和检验,发现：流动资产、流动负债所占比例与企业绩效的关系分行业有所不同;企业的流动资产周转率与企业绩效的相关性大小,主要取决于总资产周转率封企业业绩的作用大小以及流动资产占总资产的比重;营运资本政策对总资产主营业务利润率的影响较显着;营运资本政策越激进企业绩效也越好。但也有一些例外行业。不同行业的企业所选营运资本政策存在显着的差异性。     

Entrepreneurial orientation and social capital as small firm strategies: A study of gender differences from a resource-based view

Women entrepreneurs have recently been the subject of many studies which have revealed that though women possess some of the same resources as male entrepreneurs, success levels are not the same. The current study looks at the resources utilized by small business owners within downtown business districts. Using a sample of 467 small business owners, we test differences in entrepreneurial orientation and social capital between men and women entrepreneurs. Though women actually reported higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation and social capital, there were no differences in their abilities to utilize these two resources in achieving firm performance. We offer discussion of why these findings are relevant, as well as research implications.     

Corporate social responsibility and economic performance

We describe some perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR), in order to provide a context for considering the strategic motivations and implications of CSR. Based on this framework, which is based on characterizing optimal firm decision-making and underlies most existing work on CSR, we propose an agenda for further theoretical and empirical research on CSR. We then summarize and relate the articles in this special issue to the proposed agenda.     

The effects of internal locus of control on entrepreneurship: the mediating mechanisms of social capital and human capital

This paper proposes the research framework that locus of control enhances entrepreneurship through the mediating mechanisms of increased social capital in interpersonal networks and improved human capital in personal development. We adopted structural equation modeling to examine the research hypothesis. The research participants comprised managers from 14 enterprises in China; a total of 1002 valid questionnaires were collected. The results revealed that social and human capital mediate the effect that internal locus of control exerts on entrepreneurship. This study provides the following research contributions: first, the findings address the gaps in previous studies regarding the effect that a single dimension (i.e. personality traits) produces on entrepreneurship. Second, by employing the social exchange and human capital theories, we integrated interpersonal and individual perspectives into the research framework to explore factors affecting entrepreneurship, identifying that social and human capital are key-mediating mechanisms through which locus of control influences entrepreneurship.     

Space-related antecedents of social capital: some empirical inquiries about the creation of new firms

This paper analyzes the spatial aspects of social capital creation between co-localised start-ups and customers, aiming to explain the factors which may influence the diffusion of inter-organizational social networks inside industrial clusters. We suppose that local social capital is not a public good, but its creation depends both on proximity. between actors and on a sense of affiliation of an entrepreneur to the cluster. While the embeddedness of a start-up inside a cluster has a positive influence on the relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital, it negatively influences the structural dimension. Implications and future lines of research are discussed.     

Knowledge flows and performance of multinational subsidiaries: the perspective of human capital

This paper examines the relationships between knowledge flows and subsidiaries' performance in the perspective of human capital. Our empirical study of 130 Taiwanese multinational companies' (MNCs') subsidiaries show that outflow of knowledge can enhance performance; however, the inflow of knowledge can facilitate performance only in the case of high investment of human capital in subsidiaries. Additionally, the effects of knowledge inflow on subsidiary's performance are found significant only in its earlier stage of establishment.     

对我国林业外资综合绩效评价指标体系的思考

开展林业外资绩效评价是提高林业外资使用效率和实现林业跨越式发展的迫切需要,而建立一套科学、合理、具有可操作性的指标体系是实施绩效评价的关键环节。文章从系统论的角度,提出我国林业外资综合绩效评价指标体系,并运用层次分析法(AHP)对其进行分析。     

Evaluation of supplier capability and performance: A method for supply base reduction

Development of partnership with suppliers is widely recognised today as a potent tool for supply chain improvement. To develop an effective partnership, it is necessary to have a small supply base and an effort to reduce the supply base to a manageable level. Despite its overwhelming importance, models of supply base reduction are rare. Supplier sorting methods, used for pre-selection of suppliers and sometimes seen as methods for supply base reduction, have limitations ranging from (1) requirement of an exhaustive database of historical information (case-based reasoning), (2) inability to predefine the number of elements in a cluster (cluster analysis) and (3) inability to identify suppliers who are both highly capable as well as high performers (data envelopment analysis). In the present work, we develop a systematic framework for carrying out the supply base reduction process. The study assumes two important dimensions of suppliers—performance and capability. Performance of a supplier represents short-term effects on the achievement of supply chain objectives while supplier capability indicates long-term effects. Many of the performance and capability factors are imprecise in nature. In order to account for the imprecision involved in numerous subjective characteristics of suppliers, we use fuzzy set approach to measure the imprecision of these factors and rank a potential list of suppliers against their performance and capability. We then display their ranks in a ‘capability–performance matrix’ that helps a decision maker arrange the suppliers in decreasing order of preference. The desired numbers of suppliers are finally selected on the basis of this ordered list. The suggested framework will be of immense help to the practising managers in reducing the supply base—a prerequisite for building a strong supplier partnership and developing an effective supply chain.     

跨国内部社会关系维度对母子公司随知识转移绩效的影响

在今天这个经济发展日新月异的时代,跨国公司越来越成为推动全球经济发展的引擎。如今,有效的知识转移已经成为跨国公司竞争优势的重要来源之一,只有通过组织间的知识转移,才能推动组织对知识进行高效管理,实现组织的经济与竞争价值。本研究将基于企业社会资本理论中的关系维度,研究跨国母子公司间形成的关系维度对内部知识转移绩效的作用机制,从而来探索母子公司在知识转移过程中的内部关系维度作用。     

中小企业基于社会资本的债务融资模式探析

文章介绍了我国中小企业社会资本型债务融资模式的主要形式,并在此基础上分析了该融资模式的产生原因及对中小企业现阶段融资的适用性与局限性。     

HRM practices for human and social capital development: effects on innovation capabilities

This paper analyzes the effect of systems of human resource management (HRM) practices on a company's innovation capabilities. To date, few studies have analyzed the way a firm may be more innovative by using specific sets of high-performance HRM practices from an intellectual capital-based view of the firm. From an extensive literature review, a model was established and tested through structural equation modelling, using the statistical technique of partial least squares. The study was applied to a sample of technological firms in Spain and the results show that high-profile personal HRM practices positively influence human capital while collaborative HRM practices influence social capital, which, in turn, affect innovation capabilities by means of, respectively, total and partial mediating effects. Managerial and HRM implications of these results are drawn by the authors, highlighting the idea of paying increased attention to managing firms with a focus on strategic intangible assets in order to gain competitive advantages based on innovation.     

社会资本与企业技术创新的关系模型研究

文章论述了社会资本与企业技术创新的关系,分析了社会资本通过知识获取和知识吸收的中介作用从而对企业技术创新产生影响的作用机理,指出企业如何通过提高企业社会资本来促进企业知识获取和吸收知识的能力,进而提出了提高企业的技术创新能力的对策和建议。     

企业社会资本形成机理以及实现路径研究

社会资本在现代商业社会和企业经营管理中逐渐被发现和重视,成为继物质资本、人力资本、知识资本之后被重点关注的领域,其对企业价值创造具有重要作用,对于社会资本的有效形成和利用社会资本有着极其重要研究价值和指导意义。本文回顾了企业社会本研究的理论进展和不足;分别从不同的维度分析了企业社会资本是如何形成的;选取了396家中国矿产资源类上市企业作为样本,重点检验了这些维度形成的社会资本对企业的影响;为企业开发和形成社会资本提出了若干建议。     

Crossing the level of employee's performance: HPWS,affective commitment,human capital,and employee job performance in professional service organizations

Extant research on high-performance work systems (HPWS) has primarily examined the effects of HPWS on firm-level performance from a macro perspective and mostly in manufacturing settings. This study extends this literature by integrating social exchange theory and human capital theory perspectives to examine how shop-level HPWS affect employee individual performance in the service context, especially focusing on the small-scale professional service organizations. Data collected from multiple sources included 97 hair salon shop owners and 284 hairdressers as well as objective job performance measured in terms of each hairdresser's average monthly service sales. Results from cross-level analysis indicated that the relationship between shop-level HPWS and employee job performance was mediated by employee affective commitment and their human capital. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms through which HPWS impact employee outcomes and serve to bridge between macro and micro perspectives of human resource management.     

When collaborative HR practices may not work well: the moderating role of social capital in the Chinese life insurance industry

In this study, we examine the main and interaction effects of insurance agent-focused collaborative HR practices and insurance agents' social capital on their sales performance. Data from 984 participants were collected in five subsidiaries of a large Chinese life insurance company. The results show a strong relationship between social capital and objective sales performance. More importantly, we found a negative interaction effect of collaborative HR practices and network size on individual performance and a positive interaction effect of collaborative HR practices and network range on objective sales performance. The study is unique in that it looks at the interaction between HR and social capital, investigates how HR practices affect individual performance and not firm performance as has been more commonly done, and focuses on one industry to be able to capture the unique aspects of HR practices in that industry. Theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and limitations are also discussed.