Examining the Moderating Effect of Organic Structure and Innovative Culture on the Relationship between Social Capital and Knowledge Management Processes at a Research & Development Organization

Abstract

Purpose- In today’s heavy competitive environment, organizations have found that the knowledge is the best tool for keeping up with competitors. In this regard, the role of employees, as knowledge holders and the most important capital of organizations have been being taken into account more than before. Since the existence of social capital in organizations lead to improvement and development of knowledge management processes (KMP), examining the level of social capital as an important dimension of intellectual capital and its role in KMP is the main purpose of this article. Design/methodology/approach- By reviewing the existing literature and using standardized questionnaire, it was tried to examine the relationship between social capital and KMP through the moderating role of organic structure and innovative culture in the organization. After review of the existing literature in depth, we took advantages of Nahapiet and Ghoshal Model for measuring social capital and in order to measure the KMP, Bukowitz and Williams Model was used. The main hypothesis of this research was that there was a significant relationship between KMP and social capital through moderating role of organic structure and innovative culture in the organization. In order to test the hypothesis, using the test methods for correlation coefficients (Pearson and Spearman), a standardized questionnaire was designed and distributed among our target segment including faculty members, researchers and administrative staffs of university. Findings- The results showed that contrary to our expectation, considering moderator variables, structure and culture does not have positive and significant effect on KMP in the level of the organic structure and innovative culture of social capital. It was revealed that considering those two variables, social capital does have a significant and positive effect on KMP in the level of mechanical structure and non-innovative culture. We also found that there was a considerable relationship between cognitive and relational dimensions of social capital and KMP. Besides that, it was understood that there was a positive and significant relationship between each of organic structure and innovative culture’s variables and social capital and KMP’s variables. Research limitations/implications– Risks of method variance or response biases are likely as all Data are drawn from employee surveys, and some selection bias as respondents could not be directly compared with non-respondents. Originality/value – This study makes a significant contribution to the intangible assets literature by providing further evidence of the impact of culture and structure on intellectual capital.