Effects of Human, Relational, and Psychological Capitals on New Venture Performance.

Yong Wang,Cheng-Hung Tsai,Juan Cai,David D. Lin,Oyunjargal Enkhbuyant

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01071

Yong Wang, Cheng-Hung Tsai + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01071

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Abstract

Entrepreneurship research has been focusing on intangible capitals of an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial teams. Intellectual capital has been a useful framework for researching entrepreneurship, though the inclusion of intangible capital has not been comprehensive enough. We followed and extended this stream to add psychological capital into the discussion of the relationship between intellectual capital and new venture performance. We argue that psychological capital, human capital, and relational capital are representative capitals of entrepreneurs at intra-personal, personal, and interpersonal levels, respectively, none of them can be neglected for new venture success. Based on the analyses of documentary materials of famous entrepreneurs’ interviews from trustable websites/media, this conceptual analyses with case examples found different constructs to serve as important entrepreneurial intellectual capital, which consists of human (i.e., age and education, graduate work experiences, non-graduate work experiences, role models), relational (i.e., trustworthiness and co-founder relations) capitals, and psychological capital (optimism, self-efficacy, hope, and strength). This study contributes by formalizing psychological capital as a theoretical element of intellectual capital and its effectiveness with other forms of intellectual capital on entrepreneurial performance and growth.

Highlights

Intellectual capital is of great value to the entrepreneur as they are the basis for competitive advantages and value factors for the entrepreneurial enterprise (Nazari and Herremans, 2007)
Entrepreneurs with psychological capital tend to have a reputation for mental hardiness that attracts customers as well as situations that enable the organization to reinforce their capacity within the organization
Entrepreneurs with these characteristics do increase the well-being of their organizations or businesses and allow the organization to develop their grit with the aim of preserving entrepreneurial process (Hmieleski and Ensley, 2007)

Summary

Introduction

Intellectual capital is of great value to the entrepreneur as they are the basis for competitive advantages and value factors for the entrepreneurial enterprise (Nazari and Herremans, 2007). A gap in literature is that less has been committed in researching the role of psychological healthiness for intellectual capital in the context of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial capital is denoted as the capital that the entrepreneur applies when engaging in entrepreneurial activities (Firkin, 2003), which includes both material. Entrepreneurial Intellectual and Psychological Capitals and psychological resources (Luthans and Youssef-Morgan, 2004). As Bradley (1997) revealed organizations need to focus less on material assets and more on intangible assets. From such a viewpoint, psychological capital (Luthans and Youssef-Morgan, 2004) is an intangible one to be incorporated and considered together with intellectual capital. Chen et al (2018) examined that entrepreneurial behavior and decisions like those for entrepreneurial persistence need to be assessed through a knowledge and emotion lens

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