Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Performance in Russia: A Panel Study

Abstract

Drawing on the social embeddedness perspective, this paper examines the impact of entrepreneurs' social capital on their firm performance in post-Soviet Russia. Based on face-to-face interviews with 75 Russian entrepreneurs in 1995, and the follow-up study in 1999, the study contrasts the effects of structural embeddedness, relational embeddedness and resource embeddedness on firm performance. The main finding is that relational embeddedness and resource embeddedness have direct positive impacts on sales growth, profit margin and return on assets in contrast to structural embeddedness that has no impact on performance. The research implies that further research should focus on finding out what dimensions of social capital affect what performance indicators and how they affect. The practical implication is that entrepreneurs should recruit more resource-rich weak ties into their personal networks.