Knowledge sharing and social capital in globally distributed execution

The purpose of this study is to assess whether social capital explains level and quality of knowledge sharing in globally distributed execution. More specifically, the study examined how knowledge sharing in combined European–Asian teams of a globally operating engineering and construction company was affected by these teams’ social capital.

Social capital was approached via constructs covering its structural, relational and cognitive dimensions. Data for 325 employees were collected via an online questionnaire and analysed using multiple regression models.

The analyses confirm that components of social capital offer powerful explanations of both the level and the quality of knowledge sharing. The study also found many differences in how social capital affects the level versus the quality of knowledge sharing and also in how it works in the European versus the Asian situations. No social capital factor appeared to significantly predict both level and quality knowledge sharing in the European and Asian situations alike.

This study is novel in empirically establishing how knowledge sharing in globally distributed execution is affected by teams’ social capital as an integrative construct bringing together individual and group characteristics.