Role of Structural Social Capital for effective Knowledge Transfer – A Review of Literature

Abstract

Introduction and Review Approach Four decades back, Granovetter (1973) postulated social capital as a collective resource to attain knowledge flow through weak bridging ties. Since then, scholarly work linking social capital with knowledge transfer has received attention of social researchers. Recent publications such as Bodin and Crona (2009) has focused more on structural dimension of social capital and how such networks facilitate collaboration among actors for generation, acquisition and diffusion of different types of tacit and explicit knowledge. In spite of the acknowledgement of structural social capital as a stimulus for effective knowledge transfer among different stakeholders in intra and inter organizational settings, literature reviews focused in this integration is yet limited in the body of knowledge. The primary objective of this paper is to perform an integrative literature review to explore the potential role of structural social capital for effective knowledge transfer in intra and inter organizational settings. The sources for this synthesis include refereed journal articles, book chapters, and other publications between year 2000 and 2015. The databases examined included Emerald insight, Jastor, EBSCO Host, Taylor and Fransis, Sage, Springer and Google scholar. The criteria for selection began with a search command that combined two key words “social capital” and “knowledge transfer”, which later enhanced to “social networks”, “structural social capital”, “knowledge management” and “knowledge sharing”