ABSTRACT
Author: María José Peláez Cano
Director: Manuel Rodenes Adam
The export performance based on the creation of social capital through the use of informations technology.  An application in the plastics industry

      The research is about the determinants of export performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which develop their business in the plastics industry. It has seven parts. The first part presents the main research objectives as well as some observations for it´s development and the research justification.
      The second part of the research presents the main theoretical concepts and define the conceptual framework which sets out the ideas associated with social capital (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998, Bourdieu 1985), intellectual capital (The Technology Broker 1996), information technology (web 2.0), the export performance and innovation (Oslo Manual). It was made a review of relevant authors and their theories, which supports the construction of the basic theoretical model.
      Research theory focuses on how is the export performance measured through export dimension and innovation and how those variables are influenced by social capital and intellectual capital, a well the information technology and especially web tools 2.0, to facilitate collaborative social relationships.
      In the third part we presents the theoretical model to be analyzed, how is the behave of possible causes or independent variables (social capital, information technology and intellectual capital) on certain phenomena or dependent variable (export performance). The general working hypothesis was that the export performance is positively affected by the use of social  capital resources and intellectual capital through the use of collaborative information technology
	To answer this general problem, we present six alternative hypotheses in response to the same problem. We operationalized the model variables and this way, we developed the indicators that are constructed to measure each of the variables of interest.
      The fourth part presents the analysis of plastic industrial sector. We analyzed the most relevant features of the European plastic industry, as well as Spain and Comunidad Valenciana market. In the same way we analyzed the Colombian and Medellin plastic industrial market.
	The five part of this research is divided into three sections. In the first one, we make a reflexion about science, social science and scientific method. In second part, it´s been detailed some issues about the methodology and research design consistently with the proposed model. In the third part, we make a description about population under study and it´s made the simple size specification. We propose variables definition and the measure scales for the data analysis. It´s developed a face to face and an on-line surveys and we determine the statistics techniques for data analysis.
	The sixth part is divided into eight sections: in the first one presents the plastics companies’ description included in the sample. In second presents the results of scale reliability through Cronbach's Alpha and correlations. The third section presents the data reduction through factor analysis technique. The fourth section, once it has been reduced the number of variables is shown the final research model graphically. On the fifth section we examine the relationships between variables (correlations). On the sixth section, we analyzed the direct relationships between variables using the technique of multiple regression analysis. In section seven, it took out a path analysis, which is an extension of regression analysis, and finally, in the eighth section presents the cluster analysis and discriminant analysis to see how discriminating variables within those groups.
	The seventh part shows a brief summary of the results and research contributions, as well as limitations and future research lines. Among the results is that the dependent variable export performance, broken down into its two factors (export dimension and innovation) has a significant positive correlation between innovation and the independent variables social capital, intellectual capital and information technology. Likewise information technology in the presence of both social capital and the intellectual capital is the variable that directly affects export performance (aggregate). The results are only for the sample analyzed.
       
Key Words: Export Performance, Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, Information Technology (web 2.0), Plastics.