“Class matters”: human and social capital in the entrepreneurial process

By Alistair R. Anderson, C. Miller. 2003

413 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This paper explores how entrepreneurial family background impacts upon the development of social and human capital resources and demonstrates how these affect the profitability and growth of new enterprise. Through a qualitative approach, we found that those entrepreneurs from higher socio-economic groupings had high endowments of human capital. Significantly, their businesses were characterised by greater profitability and growth potential. Those entrepreneurs also had social networks characterised by high endowments of human capital. Consequently entrepreneurs from higher socio-economic class had access to highly effective business support, and these networks provided a ‘platform’ from which opportunities could be both recognised and realised.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d758aeb26cc6f88c0b880395d1795e8010326797

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management of Technology and Innovation

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Women entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa (2018, background): “Prior studies outside the region have found that social class is related to high levels of human capital (Anderson and Miller, 2003).”
Planned Luck: How Incubators Can Facilitate Serendipity for Nascent Entrepreneurs Through Fostering Network Embeddedness (2020, background): “Social embeddedness has been examined in a variety of contexts: in terms of business sectors (e.g., Uzzi, 1997, 1999), gender (e.g., Louch, 2000), families (e.g., Aldrich & Cliff, 2003), and social class (e.g., Anderson & Miller, 2003).”
Towards a process theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems (2018, background): “Entrepreneurs with larger and more diverse networks are better positioned to identify opportunities in the marketplace (Anderson and Miller, 2003), absorb new ideas (Powell et al., 2005), and have better access to risk capital (Shane and Cable, 2002).”
Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: an empirical study of R&D personnel (2013, background): “Strong-ties have been examined as important social network sources but only for entrepreneurs (Anderson and Miller, 2003; Davidsson and Honig, 2003).”
Social Capital and Entrepreneurship (2007, background): “The presence or absence of social capital is likely to infl uence the very nature of the entrepreneurial venture (Anderson and Miller, 2002).”
Entrepreneurship theories and Empirical research: A Summary Review of the Literature (2011, background): “…studies show that human capital factors are positively related to becoming a nascent entrepreneur(Kim, Aldrich & Keister, 2003,Davidson & Honing,2003, Korunka et al, 2003), increase opportunity recognition and even entrepreneurial success (Anderson & Miller, 2003,Davidson & Honing,2003).”
Change and the development of entrepreneurial networks over time: a processual perspective (2008, background): “There is even a perception that entrepreneurs are a product of their social environment and how they perceive opportunities is influenced by social interaction and an individual's social background (Anderson and Miller 2003 ).”
Entrepreneurship and Social Capital (2007, neutral): “An analysis based on social class offers an alternative way forward (Anderson and Miller, 2003) but this is rejected here because it imposes a structure on relationships between network members that is too restrictive for the purposes of this article.”
Entrepreneurial potential: The role of human and cultural capitals (2014, background): “High SES families afford their children an array of parental actions and social connections that enhance personal development and provide access to wider social networks (Anderson and Miller, 2003).”
Enacting entrepreneurship as social value creation (2011, background): “Anderson and Miller (2003) have argued that entrepreneurship draws upon the social in two distinct ways.”