Researching Social Capital in R&D Management: A Case Study in High-Tech Industry

An increasing number of publications in R&D management embrace the concept of social capital to observe, measure, and explain very different phenomena, such as R&D knowledge diffusion patterns; research productivity on the individual, team, and regional levels; and the governance and structure of R&D alliances and partnerships. The various research findings are difficult to compare, contrast, and integrate, since no coherent definition of social capital exists. To close this gap, this paper proposes a framework for social capital in R&D management that describes three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational, cognitive) and their links to R&D knowledge transfer. The framework is theoretically derived from social science literature, in which the concept of social capital first originated, and the recent R&D management literature. The framework is subsequently used to guide the inquiry in a case study of a complex, multi-year knowledge transfer process between a university and a high-tech company. The case study shows the complex impact of all three social capital dimensions on R&D knowledge transfer and supports the proposed frameworks as a useful tool for R&D management research on social capital.