دانلود رایگان مقاله سرمایه انسانی غیر بنیانگذار و رشد و بقای درازمدت پروژه های با تکنولوژی بالا

abstract

This paper considers the impact of non-founder human capital on high-tech firms' long-run growth and survival. Drawing upon threshold theory, we explore how lack of access to complementary skills at different points in the life course impacts founders' thresholds for exit. We examine these factors using a unique longitudinal dataset tracking the performance and survival of a sample of UK high-tech firms over thirteen years as the firms move from youth into maturity. We find that firms that survive but do not grow are characterized by difficulty in accessing complementary managerial skills in youth, while firms that grow but subsequently exit are characterized by shortfalls of specialized complementary skills during adolescence. Firms that grow and survive do not report skills shortfalls. We discuss the implications of these resource constraints for entrepreneurs’ decisions to persist or exit through the life course.

6. Discussion

6.1. Summary There is a well-developed literature on the role of human capital on the performance of new technology based firms (Westhead and Cowling, 1995;Aspelund et al., 2005; Colombo and Grilli 2005, 2010; Brinckmann et al., 2011; Ganotakis, 2012). This longitudinal study of 245 UK high-tech ventures contributes to this literature in three different ways. First, this paper discusses the importance of workforce skills, rather than the human capital of the founder or top management team, as is commonly done in the literature. Second, it considers two measures of performance (growth and survival) jointly rather than simply one measure or the other. Third, it examines the changing impact of workforce skills on the firm's performance over an extended period, therefore allowing the tracking of changes as firms progress through their life course.