سرمایه انسانی و موفقیت کارآفرینی : بررسی فرا تحلیلی

The study meta-analytically integrates results from three decades of human capital research in entrepreneurship. Based on 70 independent samples (N = 24,733), we found a significant but small relationship between human capital and success (rc = .098). We examined theoretically derived moderators of this relationship referring to conceptualizations of human capital, to context, and to measurement of success. The relationship was higher for outcomes of human capital investments (knowledge/skills) than for human capital investments (education/experience), for human capital with high task-relatedness compared to low task-relatedness, for young businesses compared to old businesses, and for the dependent variable size compared to growth or profitability. Findings are relevant for practitioners (lenders, policy makers, educators) and for future research. Our findings show that future research should pursue moderator approaches to study the effects of human capital on success. Further, human capital is most important if it is task-related and if it consists of outcomes of human capital investments rather than human capital investments; this suggests that research should overcome a static view of human capital and should rather investigate the processes of learning, knowledge acquisition, and the transfer of knowledge to entrepreneurial tasks.

Human capital attributes – including education, experience, knowledge, and skills – have long been argued to be a critical resource for success in entrepreneurial firms (e.g., Florin et al., 2003, Pfeffer, 1994 and Sexton and Upton, 1985). Researchers' interest in human capital is reflected in the numerous studies that have applied the concept to entrepreneurship (e.g., ⁎Chandler and Hanks, 1998, ⁎Davidsson and Honig, 2003 and ⁎Rauch et al., 2005a). In practice, investors have traditionally attached a high importance to the experiences of entrepreneurs in their evaluation of firm potential (Stuart and Abetti, 1990). In fact, management skills and experience are the most frequently used selection criteria of venture capitalists (Zacharakis and Meyer, 2000). Moreover, researchers have argued that human capital may play an even larger role in the future because of the constantly increasing knowledge-intensive activities in most work environments (e.g., ⁎Bosma et al., 2004, ⁎Honig, 2001, Pennings et al., 1998 and Sonnentag and Frese, 2002). To date, the interest in human capital continues, and most authors conclude that human capital is related to success (e.g., ⁎Bosma et al., 2004, Bruederl et al., 1992, Cassar, 2006, Cooper et al., 1994, Dyke et al., 1992 and Van der Sluis et al., 2005). The magnitude of this relationship, however, remains unknown. While some authors argue that the relationship between human capital and entrepreneurial success is commonly overemphasized (Baum and Silverman, 2004), others argue that human capital constitutes one of the core factors in the entrepreneurial process (Haber and Reichel, 2007). Thus, there is disagreement about the relative importance of human capital in entrepreneurship research. Moreover, the magnitude of the relationship between human capital and success seems to vary considerably across studies. While some studies reported moderate or even high relationships (r > .40, Duchesneau and Gartner, 1990; r > .20, Frese et al., 2007) other studies reported low relationships (e.g., r < .06, Davidsson and Honig, 2003; r < .10, Gimeno et al., 1997). One reason for the variance of reported effects may be the presence of moderator variables. For example, an inspection of the literature shows that studies differ in their conceptualizations of human capital, their choices of success indicators, and their study contexts such as industry, country, and age of the business. Thus it remains unclear what kind of human capital should be related to success and under what circumstances. Surprisingly, to our knowledge, no study has systematically investigated moderators influencing the human capital–success relationship. In this study, we address the human capital–success relationship by meta-analytically integrating the results of more than three decades of human capital research. Meta-analysis provides a quantitative estimate of the population effects, allows for the correction of statistical artifacts, and for the identification of moderator variables (Hunter and Schmidt, 1990). Meta-analysis represents an important step toward evidence-based entrepreneurship (Rauch and Frese, 2006) and is a practical tool for theory development. The study contributes to the literature in at least three important ways. First, we determine the magnitude of the overall effect of human capital on entrepreneurial success. Second, we test the effects of different human capital attributes, such as task-relatedness and human capital investments versus outcomes of human capital investments. Finally, we identify conditions that moderate the relationship between human capital and success.

This meta-analysis provides a useful estimate of the true relationship between human capital and entrepreneurial success. The overall effect size was .098. While this effect size is small by statistical standards (Cohen, 1977), it is as high as, for instance, the correlation between planning and success (r = .10; Brinckmann et al., 2010). While traditional statistical reasoning may argue against the practical importance of such correlations, these correlations may well have important implications, as the field of medical meta-analyses has shown (Meyer et al., 2001). As a matter of fact, a correlation of .10 may well translate into a difference of a two times higher success rate in business owners with a high degree of human capital in comparison to those with a low degree of human capital (Rosenthal and Rubin, 1982). Our study may guide practitioners in their evaluation of small businesses and may resolve some of the controversies surrounding investment decisions and human capital criteria. Investors are well advised to carefully choose from the pool of available human capital indicators. Just using any human capital indicator may be a poor advice given the overall effect size reported in our analysis. Our analysis suggests to rely on knowledge and task-related human capital and, thereby, considering the specific contextual requirements of the entrepreneur. Future studies could build on our distinctions of human capital to directly assess incremental validities of different types of human capital. In addition to other success predictors selected human capital indicators may also increase the accuracy of prediction models and help practitioners in their decision process.