FROM FOUNDERS TO FIRMS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CEO SOCIAL CAPITAL
Open Access
- Author:
- Fund, Bret Ryan
- Graduate Program:
- Business Administration
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 06, 2008
- Committee Members:
- Timothy Grant Pollock, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Wenpin Tsai, Committee Member
Donald C Hambrick, Committee Member
Forrest Scott Briscoe, Committee Member
Michele Lowry, Committee Member - Keywords:
- social capital
founder ceo
venture capital
social capital transfer
executive succession
new venture
governance
entrepreneurship - Abstract:
- This dissertation provides a new theoretical framework introducing the concept of social capital transfer and explains how and when it occurs among individuals and organizations. I draw from a variety of areas of research to accomplish this task, including social capital, embeddedness, and upper echelons literatures. The structure of my dissertation will be as follows: Following an introduction into the core concepts of my work in Chapter 1, I will seek to develop the theoretical foundations of the broader concept of social capital transfer based on the social capital literature in Chapter 2. This discussion will be wider in scope than the Founder-CEO context I wish to emphasize, but the broad background is necessary to lay the foundation for empirically examining the topic within this specific context. Chapter 3 will discuss the relevant literatures that speak (or fail to speak, as the case may be) to the issue of social capital transfer in transitional events within a firm, especially with executive succession. From this discussion I develop hypotheses that will be tested empirically in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 will describe the methodologies to be used and the advantages and disadvantages subsequent of these methodologies. Lastly, Chapters 5 and 6 will report the findings of the empirical work and summarize the benefits that can be derived from this project.