Leveraging social identification ties with employees for firm growth: the relevance of entrepreneurs’ social skills

Purpose This study examines how entrepreneurs’ social relationships with employees and between employees in intrafirm social networks could influence firm growth and the extent to which their social skills strengthened this influence. Design/methodology/approach This study employed a quantitative approach. UCINET (social network analysis software) and partial least squares structural equation modelling technique were employed to determine the network measures and to estimate the measurement and structural models in testing the hypotheses, respectively. Findings The findings suggest that reciprocal exchanges of work-related information and resources in the workplace improve employees’ inclinations and productivity towards firm growth. While highly dense connections with the network are inimical to firm growth. Furthermore, entrepreneurs’ social skills do not directly determine the structure of the centralisation and reciprocity of their intrafirm social networks, but rather enhance the ability of entrepreneurs to use the centralisation and reciprocity of their intrafirm social networks to influence their employees’ productivity towards achieving firm growth. Originality/value This study presents novel contributions by combining the behavioural and skill perspectives of network theory to shed new insights into how entrepreneurs could turn their social relationships with employees into relational and structural intrafirm social networks necessary to achieve firm growth. It further unpacks the contingency implications of entrepreneurs’ social skills on the relationship between their intrafirm social networks and firm growth, bringing to the fore the relevance of boundary conditions in social network studies within the organisation.