This paper examines how social capital and organizational innovativeness influence business performance through their separate, indirect, or interactive effects, and how these effects differ across the institutional contexts of a transition economy and a market economy. In line with institutional theory, our findings show that the effects of social capital are more extensive and probably more malignant in a transition economy than in a market economy. Furthermore, different types of organizational innovativeness, as corporate culture, can be cultivated by different forms of social capital in different institutional contexts. The implications for institutional theory and social capital theory, and the managerial implications, are discussed.