No abstract

It is accepted that knowledge and competencies are key drivers of innovation. Knowledge is a key resource to manage if innovative efforts are to succeed. Despite this, it is noted that the process is intricate, complex, and difficult to manage. To facilitate understanding and management of this process, in-depth studies into the roles of network actors, implications of network characteristics over time, and greater understanding of interaction effects is required. This paper analyzes how a social network perspective can inform the key stages of a knowledge management for innovation process and conducts an exploration of this process on three university–industry knowledge networks. The set of findings reflect the evolution of the structural, relational, and cognitive social capital components and identify the most valuable characteristics relevant at each phase of the innovation process.

The problem and the solution. A focus on collective, as opposed to individual learning, points to the social network component of learning. Collective learning is fundamentally concerned with social interaction and the development of relational synergies.A key challenge to understanding social interaction is the influence of trust. Trust is important for social capital development and thus for collective learning.This article addresses a significant gap in the literature by reviewing the literature on collective learning, trust, and social capital theory and proposing a set of propositions for further research.The article also identifies a number of implications for HRD in tandem with each proposition.

Much knowledge on which performance in practice is based is tacit (Smith, 2001) making it a valuable, rare resource, which is difficult to imitate or substitute (Barney, 1991) and a vital source of organizational competitive advantage. However, there is limited research available delineating tacit from explicit knowledge (Insch et al., 2008; Garcia‐Perez & Mitra, 2007) and thus gaps in our understanding about how to derive the greatest value from it. Knowledge management (KM) is partly a socially constructed phenomenon embedded in people and relationships (Nonaka, 1991). However, KM research has neglected the role of the microlevel of individuals and social interactions (Foss, 2009). Furthermore, knowledge sharing research neglects to explore all phases of what is a bidirectional relationship. Scant research exists on the knowledge‐seeking process—from the seeker to the source (Hansen et al., 2005) as the focus is on the unidirectional notion of knowledge sharing—from the source to the seeker (Kim et al., 2011). This study utilizes the social capital lens, which focuses on social relationships and in particular the relations between, rather than the characteristics of, individuals, groups, processes, or organizations, to explore tacit knowledge‐seeking processes. The data are based on five American multinational manufacturing organizations and interviews with 105 operators, technicians, and engineers engaged in tacit knowledge work. The paper discusses the results of the investigation of the relational social capital factors of trust, norms, sanctions and social identification, and their influence on decisions to operationalize a tacit knowledge‐seeking interaction.

In many fields within management and organizational literature there is considerable debate and controversy about key theoretical concepts and their definitions and meanings. Systematic metaphor analysis can be a useful approach to study the underlying conceptualizations that give rise to these controversies and putting them in perspective. It can help identify the different ways a theoretical concept is structured and given meaning, provide insight into the way these different conceptualizations relate to each other, and show how these conceptualizations impact further theorization about the concept. This article describes the procedure for a systematic analysis of the metaphors used to conceptualize key theoretical concepts. To examine its usefulness, the authors apply the approach to the field of social capital, and in particular to the concept of 'relationships' in organizations. In the metaphor analysis of three seminal articles on social capital, the authors identify seven metaphoric concepts for relationships. The metaphors are illuminated as important for providing imagery that adds specific meaning in the process of authors theorizing about social capital like 'tie', 'path' and 'bridge'. They add dynamics and controllability to the concepts by attributing an array of verbs like 'to move between' or 'to use' relationships. In addition, the metaphors allow for the attribution of specific characteristics to the concept of relationships that can be used as variables in theory construction, such as the strength of a relationship or the 'distance' between people. These insights are useful in exploring and reconciling differences in social capital definitions.