With the deepening of China’s economic reform, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)are starting to gain tremendous economic momentum and play an increasingly irreplaceable role in China’s century-long bid for economic resurgence. In 1999, according to the Chinese Economic and Trade Committee, there were more than 10 million SMEs officially registered. These comprised some 98 percent of all business and provided 60 percent of the gross national product (GNP), 40 percent of profits and taxes, and some 68 percent of exports (Anderson, Li, Harrison, and Robson, 2003).What is intriguing is that SMEs have achieved all these accomplishments without preferential treatment from the government (Peng and Heath, 1996; Luo, Tan, and Shenkar, 1998;Yang, 2004). How can SMEs be achieving rapid rates of growth while facing enormous handicaps such as lack of legitimacy, resources and government supports? Xin and Pearce (1996) pointed to the guanxi (managerial networking) that many SMEs utilize to manage scarcity (or hostility) by actively securing production factors, distribution channels, and institutional support.
A growing number of the literature on Chinese management and organization has contributed tremendously to our understanding of the role of guanxi in firm performance (Luo and Chen, 1997; Peng and Luo, 2000; Park and Luo, 2001; Luo, 2003). Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the relationship between social capital and firm performance in the context of SMEs that have achieved rapid growth by overcoming seemingly insurmountable liabilities such as lack of legitimacy, resources and government supports. Moreover, most of the extant studies on business networks in China pay little attention to the impact of managerial value of reciprocity on social


隨著中國經(jīng)濟(jì)改革的深入，中小企業(yè)開始獲得巨大的經(jīng)濟(jì)動力并在中國的百年經(jīng)濟(jì)復(fù)蘇的努力中扮演越來越不可替代的作用。1999年，根據(jù)中國經(jīng)貿(mào)部的統(tǒng)計，正式注冊的有超過1000萬家中小企業(yè)。這些企業(yè)包括了98%的行業(yè)并占了GNP的60%，40%的利潤和稅收，68%的出口（Anderson, Li, Harrison, and Robson, 2003）。有趣的是，這些中小企業(yè)是在沒有國家的優(yōu)惠政策的情況下取得這些成績的（Peng and Heath, 1996; Luo, Tan, and Shenkar, 1998;Yang, 2004）。中小企業(yè)是如何在面對諸如缺乏合法性、資源和政府支持的巨大的阻礙下獲得快速的增長？Xin and Pearce(1996)指向了許多中小企業(yè)用來管理來源于積極的固定生產(chǎn)要素、分配渠道和制度的支持的稀缺（或敵意）的“關(guān)系”（管理