The Influence of Director Human Social Capital and Firms' Entrepreneurial Orientation on Corporate Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This dissertation explores the link between corporate governance and corporate entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, our understanding of how boards of directors influence corporate entrepreneurship decisions and actions has been limited to date. To address this gap, the current study develops a resource dependence theoretical framework to investigate how corporations leverage directors’ experience and networks to enhance organizational rejuvenation efforts. Entrepreneurial orientation also is examined as a contextual factor in the director capital-corporate entrepreneurship relationship. After collecting an original dataset of 2,289 firm-year observations from 524 U.S. corporations and creating a new measure of organizational rejuvenation, I implemented a hybrid methodological approach to simultaneously test the within- and between-firm influences of the variables of interest. The analytical results demonstrate surprising reverse effects of director human capital, social capital, and the contextual influence of entrepreneurial orientation on firms’ corporate entrepreneurship initiatives. These findings support prior theoretical arguments that directors serve a dual role: not only monitoring and controlling firm decisions but also serving an important advice and counsel function.