The role of social capital in knowledge management

Description

This special issue explores the interconnection between social capital and knowledge management in organizations. Social capital—networks of relationships, trust, and shared norms—facilitates knowledge exchange and integration, enhancing intellectual capital development and organizational competitiveness across sectors including technology, finance, healthcare, and creative industries.

The call addresses critical research gaps including the lack of general theory explaining how social capital translates to intellectual capital across different contexts, inconsistent measurement approaches, and limited longitudinal studies. It seeks contributions examining how social capital functions as a mediating mechanism in digital environments, how it evolves over time, and how cultural and technological factors influence these dynamics.

The special issue invites empirical and theoretical research from academics and practitioners investigating social capital's role in knowledge creation, innovation outcomes, and competitive advantage, with particular attention to measurement frameworks, trust mechanisms, and organizational structures that enable effective knowledge management.

Potential topics

• How does social capital translate into intellectual capital across different organizational contexts?
• In what ways does social capital act as a mediator of knowledge management in digital and dynamic environments?
• How can social capital in knowledge management be measured? To what extent do trust, networks, and norms function as distinct versus overlapping dimensions of social capital?
• How does social capital evolve over time, and what are its long-term effects on knowledge creation and sharing?
• How do individual employee networks aggregate to create firm-level intellectual capital?
• How is social capital value disclosed?
• How do national cultures influence the relationship between social capital and knowledge management?
• In what ways do organizational structures influence the effectiveness of social capital in enabling knowledge management?
• How do emerging technologies impact the development and role of social capital in knowledge management?
• What role does trust play in knowledge sharing and knowledge application processes?
• How can organizations foster trust to strengthen social capital in virtual and hybrid workplaces?
• How does social capital-driven knowledge management contribute to organizational innovation?
• What is the relationship between social capital, knowledge management, and competitive advantage in dynamic markets?