Sustainable corporate entrepreneurship performance and social capital: a multi-level analysis

This study advances research on sustainable corporate entrepreneurship performance and social capital by exploring how the development of unit-level employees' internal network knowledge and firm-level top management team's (TMT) external network knowledge affect the association between transformational leadership and sustainable corporate entrepreneurship performance. By analyzing data of 561 top managers, 760 managers, and 1563 employees from 282 units in 87 firms from the high technology and manufacturing industries, we found that transformational leaders were relevant to the growth of employees' internal bridging knowledge ties behavior at the unit level and sustainable corporate entrepreneurial performance. However, such association was moderated by firm-level TMT's external bridging knowledge ties behaviors such that the influence was stronger as firm-level TMT external bridging knowledge ties behaviors lessened. This reveals the relationship between an unrecognized cost of firm TMT's external bridging ties behaviors and corporate entrepreneurship performance. Finally, the implications, limitations, and scope for future research are discussed.