The role of social capital in promoting the knowledge sharing and employees’ productivity in knowledge based industrial organizations

Subject Areas : Business Management

Seyed Mahdi  Sarkhosh Hosseini ¹ (دکتری مهندسی صنایع، گروه مدیریت سیستم و بهره‌وری، دانشگاه صنعتی مالک اشتر، تهران، ایران)
Payman  Akhavan ² (دانشیار گروه مدیریت سیستم و بهره‌وری، دانشگاه صنعتی مالک اشتر، تهران، ایران)

Received: 2015-09-21 Accepted : 2016-06-11 Published : 2016-11-21

Keywords: Social capital, Knowledge Sharing, knowledge donating, employees’ productivity,

Abstract :

The knowledge based industrial organizations in order to produce the high-quality products in the shortest span of time, with the least expenses, require having access to the knowledge at the time which is necessary. Thus, knowledge sharing is one of the most key factors to the success in such organizations. However, the amount of sharing the knowledge among the employees depends on various factors and included different useful outcomes for the organizations. Hence, the study using a concrete model tried to investigate the relation among the empowered people, processes, and the result of knowledge sharing in the knowledge based industrial organization. The social capital as empowered factors, collecting knowledge, and donating knowledge as processes, employees’ productivity as the result of knowledge sharing are investigated. The research method was descriptive-survey. To gather the data, questionnaire was used. To test hypotheses the Partial Least Squares was used. The results gathered from 143 people from 10 investigated Firms showed that there was a positive significant difference in mutual social relationship and trust on employees’ willingness to gather knowledge and donating it. Finally, some practical implications for knowledge practitioners to foster firm innovation capability through knowledge sharing were suggested.  

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