How members' managerial social capital influences their opportunism in interfirm relationships

Purpose - Managerial social capital could exert valuable influences to firms' operating performance in social networks. Through the lens of structural hole theory, the relational rents of managerial social capital partly results from certain controlling power endured by the network structure, thereby potentially signifying opportunistic behaviors once such relational rents are acquired at the cost of other parties' potential value loss. As such, it can be expected that using managerial social capital may inherently evoke a focal firm's high tendency of opportunism in its cooperative arrangement. This paper mainly aims at shedding lights on the opportunism implications of managerial social capital in the context of interorganizational relationships. Design/methodology/approach - The authors collected data from 197 manufacturing joint ventures in China mainland. Findings - Based on these sample Chinese‐foreign joint ventures, this paper found that member firms' managerial social capital tend to strengthen their opportunistic behaviors in special interfirm relationships, such that opportunistic behaviors mainly aim at taking control of the procedure of relation arrangement without significantly influencing relationship performance as well as its outcome distribution. Originality/value - By demonstrating certain downsides of social capital, such that using social capital could induce opportunistic behaviors in interfirm relationships, it is expected that the study to contribute to both future social capital and joint venture research and business practices, especially to joint venture operations in China.