How Is Social Capital Associated with Innovation Performance? Evidence from China Chemical Industry

Abstract

Social capital and innovation became one of the most significant topics for researchers in last decade. Our research also makes its contribution to develop the theoretical basis and tries to find out relationship between social capital and innovation performance. In our research social capital has been measured in forms of four networks: external personal networks, internal personal networks, membership in national trade associations and membership in regional trade associations. Innovation has been measured by two parameters such as the number of patents and the number of new products of the firm. We tested individual and collective effect of these four networks on innovation performance. We used e-mailed survey among 195 CEO’s of China’s chemical industry participants to collect the data and obtained 105 (53.8 %) full responses, which were suitable for our research. Then we collected the rest of necessary data of innovation on the Official web site of State Intellectual Property Office of The People’s Republic of China. After using negative binomial regression we made 12 models, where we sought the support for five hypotheses, which we had proposed. We found that three of four studied networks are significantly and positively associated with innovation performance. Only internal personal network had less effect on innovation in two models. Our findings and conclusions can be useful and beneficial for top managers operating in all kind of industries, particularly to CEOs of large firms such as China chemical industry firms.