The relationship between social capital and knowledge creation with the perspective of social network features: A field survey on academics

Social capital has a positive effect on knowledge creation and innovation, which are the most basic needs of competing and adapting to the new production systems of organizations. Through the sources, embedded in social capital dimensions, structural, relational and cognitive dimensions provide a forcible background to the basic knowledge creation activities such as accessed knowledge and combining it with the existing knowledge. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between social capital and knowledge creation through the social network theories. The relationship between social network features, embedded in structural social capital dimension, also trust among individuals, embedded in relational social capital dimension and knowledge creation have been investigated. In this context, the effects of social network features and trust dimensions on the article number of academics in sciences and social sciences have been evaluated. It has been found that in the sciences, the relationships from the other universities, in other words, university heterogeneity and tie strength have a positive effect on knowledge creation. However, in social sciences, only university heterogeneity has made a positive effect. Competence trust in sciences and benevolence trust in social sciences have made a negative effect on knowledge creation. According to these results, the relationship between social capital and knowledge creation is changing in respect of the features of different disciplines. Spreading collective working culture and combining of knowledge creation activities with social interaction could increase the positive effects of social capital on knowledge creation.