Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks

Using data collected from multiple respondents in all the business units of a large multinational electronics company, we examined the relationships both among the structural, relational, and cognitive dimensions of social capital and between those dimensions and the patterns of resource exchange and product innovation within the company. Social interaction, a manifestation of the structural dimension of social capital, and trust, a manifestation of its relational dimension, were significantly related to the extent of interunit resource exchange, which in turn had a significant effect on product innovation.