A Study on the Structural Relationship Between Social Capital, Dynamic Capability and Business Performance in the Supply Chain Environment

Abstract

AbstractRecently, the global industrial system has been rapidly changing thanks to the revolutionary technological innovation, but small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been unable to adapt themselves to environmental changes due to the lack of managerial resources so that environmental changes may rather pose threats to the survival of SMEs. Therefore, in order to form social capitals by establishing organic relations with partner companies that possess complementary assets in the supply chain environment, and present management strategies of SMEs to secure competitive advantages and ensure sustainable growth based on the foregoing social capitals, this study empirically analyzed the influencing relationships among social capitals, dynamic capabilities, and business performance in the SMEs’ supply chain environment. As a result of the study, first, structural capitals out of social capitals were found to have positive effects on the opportunity exploration capability and the resource acquisition capability out of dynamic capabilities and no significant effect on only the resource reconfiguration capability, and cognitive capitals and relational capitals were found to have positive effects on all components of dynamic capabilities. Second, the opportunity exploration capability and the resource acquisition capability out of dynamic capabilities were shown to have positive effects on financial and non-financial performances, but the resource reconfiguration capability was shown to have no significant effect on financial or non-financial performance. The significance of this study can be said to be the fact that it verified the paths through which social capitals mediate dynamic capabilities to lead to business performance by component and presented theoretical grounds for the arguments.KeywordsStructural capitalCognitive capitalRelational capitalDynamic capital