Corporate Social Capital and Technological Innovation: An Empirical Study of Chinese Firms

In the knowledge economy, technological innovation in firms is meeting the challenge of the accelerated globalization of manufacturing industries. When their boundaries are getting more and more blurry, firms cannot make technological innovation isolatedly. Firms should effectively acquire and exploit knowledge by both cooperating with other entities externally and increasing communication between various departments internally. External and internal linkages compose corporate social capital. In this work we explore the impact of corporate social capital on technological innovation. Our findings, based on a survey of 142 Chinese firms, provide strong support that the levels of three characteristic dimension of corporate social capital (structural, relational and cognitive one) are important antecedents for technological innovation. However, the levels of structural and relational dimensions indirectly promote technological innovation through the level of cognitive dimension of corporate social capital. Firms should manage to get trade-off on increasing the levels of three dimensions of corporate social capital to promote technological innovation