Social Capital and the Creation of Knowledge

29 Pages Posted: 19 Apr 2008

See all articles by Claudia N. Gonzalez-Brambila

Claudia N. Gonzalez-Brambila

Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)

Francisco M. Veloso

Carnegie Mellon University - Engineering and Public Policy (EPP); CATOLICA - LISBON School of Business and Economics

David Krackhardt

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the social capital and knowledge creation in research, mostly in the context of universities. The analysis is developed considering all of the following critical aspects of social capital: direct ties, strengths of direct ties, density, structural holes, centrality, and external-internal index in terms of fields of knowledge. Two important results arise from this research. First, the overall results suggest that, when controlling for other network variables and individual heterogeneity, the effects of the structural holes variable disappear. This result stands in contrast to the established idea that structural holes is the most important variable to represent social capital and, therefore, is seen as contributing to superior performance. Second, the results show that with this strong set of controls, what matters in social capital is having many direct ties, being in a central position, having partners from different areas of knowledge, and being part of a non dense network.

Keywords: Social Networks, scientific knowledge creation

Suggested Citation

Gonzalez-Brambila, Claudia N. and Veloso, Francisco M. and Veloso, Francisco M. and Krackhardt, David, Social Capital and the Creation of Knowledge. 2008 Industry Studies Conference Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1120977 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1120977

Claudia N. Gonzalez-Brambila (Contact Author)

Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) ( email )

Av. Camino a Sta. Teresa 930
Col. Héroes de Padierna
Mexico City, D.F. 01000
Mexico

Francisco M. Veloso

Carnegie Mellon University - Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~fveloso/

CATOLICA - LISBON School of Business and Economics ( email )

Palma de Cima
Lisboa, 1649-023
Portugal

David Krackhardt

Carnegie Mellon University - David A. Tepper School of Business ( email )

5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
338
Abstract Views
2,750
Rank
162,865
PlumX Metrics