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 (r c = .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.

The performance implications of innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have attracted considerable interest among academics and practitioners. However, empirical research on the innovation–performance relationship in SMEs shows controversial results. This meta-analysis synthesizes empirical findings in order to obtain evidence whether and especially under which circumstances smaller, resource-scarce firms benefit from innovation. We find that innovation–performance relationship is context dependent. Factors such as the age of the firm, the type of innovation, and the cultural context affect the impact of innovation on firm performance to a large extent

Despite the importance of the external task environment for firm performance, little is known about the mechanisms that enable firms to benefit from a specific environmental setting. The authors argue that firms adjust their entrepreneurial orientation (EO) to the external environment and use it as a mechanism to transform the advantages provided by the environment into above-average performance levels. Specifically, the authors use meta-analysis supplemented by structural equation modeling to explore the links among environmental munificence, hostility, dynamism and complexity, EO, and firm performance in a mediation model. The results suggest that environmental munificence, dynamism, and complexity affect EO and, in turn, firm performance. The authors discuss the meta-analytical findings with respect to their theoretical contribution and their practical implications.

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