Complements or substitutes? A Meta-analysis of the role of social capital for individual knowledge transfer

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the effects of different dimensions of social capital on individual knowledge transfer to nurture the organization’s intellectual capital, as well as the interactions among these dimensions and explore the potential moderators.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted a meta-analysis with 108 independent empirical studies to examine the different dimensions of social capital–knowledge transfer relationships and the effects of moderators and used meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) to test the internal relationships among social capital dimensions.FindingsThe results show that structural, relational and cognitive social capitals are all positively related to knowledge transfer. In addition, different dimensions of social capital act as complements to one another. Further examinations reveal that the level of economic development has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between social capital and knowledge transfer. Then, the cultural context and profit climate characteristics moderate the relationship between social capital and knowledge transfer.Originality/valueLeveraging the trilogy of signaling, learning and spillover effects, this meta-analytic study quantitatively integrates the relationships between different dimensions of social capital and knowledge transfer. It reconciles the present disparate findings, demonstrates the validity of different dimensional social capital interactions and obtains highly generalized conclusions. This study also introduces a dichotomy, saturation versus reinforcement, to explain the mixed results, which enriches social capital theory.