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Sustainable Growth and Exporting Performance of New Companies: What Is the Role of the Founders’ Human Capital and Social Capital?

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Context-based Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This study analyses whether founders’ human capital and social capital affect the sustainable growth and exporting performance of new companies. This is achieved through a sample of Portuguese data gathered from the Staff Register database and a set of data on international commerce, covering 26,990 companies created in 2002, which were followed until 2007. Company founders were accompanied from 1996 to 2000, in order to assess the effects of different human and social capital attributes on the growth and exporting performance of their new firms. Regarding human capital attributes, founders’ education is revealed to be important for firms’ export growth, the same being found for management experience and past business experience, the latter being more effective when obtained in larger firms. In addition, if founders’ management experience is accumulated in the same industrial sector as the new company, this has an important and significant effect on export growth. This study also presents new directions, in terms of knowledge about social capital attributes, by revealing the significant effect of the management experience acquired by founders, associated with the condition of having worked together in the same parent-company, on export growth in new firms.

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  1. Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Business Science Study Centre (NECE), Covilhã, Portugal

    João Leitão

  2. Research Center in Business Sciences (NECE), Covilhã, Portugal

    João Leitão & Dina Pereira

  3. Centre for Management Studies at the Technical Institute (CEG-IST), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Leitão & Dina Pereira

  4. Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Leitão

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  1. Department of Management and Economics, NECE - Research Center in Business Sciences, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

    João Leitão

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, La Trobe Business School, La Trobe Univesity, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Vanessa Ratten

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Leitão, J., Pereira, D. (2022). Sustainable Growth and Exporting Performance of New Companies: What Is the Role of the Founders’ Human Capital and Social Capital?. In: Leitão, J., Ratten, V. (eds) Context-based Entrepreneurship. Studies on Entrepreneurship, Structural Change and Industrial Dynamics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05307-8_3

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