Entrepreneur’s Multiplex Political Connections and Firm’s Performance : Super-additivity, Sub-additivity or No-additivity? (企业家多重政治联系与企业绩效关系：超可加性、次可加性或不可加性?)

English Abstract: The entrepreneurs try their best to obtain all sorts of sparse resources from the governments to develop their firms, thus they positively build all kinds of relations with the governments. However, owning the weak political connections the entrepreneur can only access to these political resources at the best, they cannot enough acquire these resources from the governments and realize the value of the resources in their firms. Our arguments are that entrepreneur's multiplex political connections have stronger influences than the single (or dyadic) political connection, and the stronger influences more easily realize the value of the political resources in the firms. Drawing on the empirical data of Chinese listed private firms from year 2003 to year 2011, we documented these propositions. The results show that different kinds of political connections are no wholly independent each other and they are not identical. So they have sub-additivity. The two kinds of political connections of deputy and member have weak subtactivity. The entrepreneur's single political connection has no effect on firm's performance, dual political connections have weak positive effects, and triple political connections have significant negative effects on firm's performance. This paper analyses the possible causes and theory explanations, and propose the future research issues.Chinese Abstract: 企业家设法从政府获取各种稀缺资源来发展企业，因而积极与政府构建各种各样的关系。但仅有薄弱的政治联系顶多只能接触到这些政治资源，还不足以从政府机关获取资源并将这些资源的价值变现。我们的主张是企业家与政府的多重联系比单一的联系具有更大的影响力，而这种更大的影响力更能够将政治资源的价值在企业里得以实现。根据中国民营上市公司2003-2011年的经验数据，我们验证了这些命题。结果发现，不同类型的政治联系彼此之间不完全独立，也不完全等同，也即具有次可加性。人大代表与政协委员这两类政治联系彼此之间还有弱的可减性。单一的政治联系对于企业绩效没有多大的效应，二重政治联系对于企业绩效有积极的弱效应，而三重政治联系则存在明显的负效应。文章分析了这种现象的可能原因及其理论解释，并提出了未来研究的议题。