The More, The Better? Effects of Entrepreneurial Firms’ Social Relations on Their IPO Performance

Will more social relations always bring better performance for entrepreneurial firms? Using a sample of all firms which went through an IPO during 2001-2004 in the U.S., we examine the relationship between social relations of entrepreneurial firms and their performance. Prior research has suggested that having relationships at the early stage of organizational life provides many advantages to entrepreneurial firms. Entrepreneurial firms facing severe uncertainty can gain benefits from social relations, because relations can provide access to various resources. To a certain point, we accept this well-known thesis. However, we argue that too many relations may have detrimental consequences to firms’ success. We introduce possible negative mechanisms and test the effect of immoderate level of social relations on the entrepreneurial firms’ performance. We expect that social relations of entrepreneurial firms will have an inverted U-gshaped relationship with performance. We specify social relations of three important groups (founder, TMT, and BOD) in entrepreneurial firms and examine their impact on the IPO performance. As a result, social relations of TMT and BOD have an inverted U-shaped relationship with IPO performance as expected. However, founder interlock has a negative impact on IPO performance. Finally, implications and limitations are discussed.