Research On The Relationships Among Organizational Social Capital,knowledge Creation And Dynamic Capabilities

In the hyper-competitive environment of global economic integration,continuous upgrading of customer demand and sustainable development of science and technology,the static balance formed by enterprises in the steady-state environment is constantly broken.And the original competitive advantages can no longer cope with the changing external environment.Therefore,enterprises urgently need to reconstruct the capability suitable for different external environments,such as sensing and identifying ability.However,the traditional resource-based view is not enough to explain how enterprises gain competitive advantages in changing the environment.Therefore,some scholars put forward the concept of dynamic capability that represents the ability of enterprises to integrate,construct,and restructure internal and external resources.It will explain how enterprises acquire and maintain competitive advantages in the context of high uncertainty.According to the knowledge management theory,knowledge creation provides enterprises with unprecedented new knowledge and becomes a new logical starting point to solve the problem of dynamic capability.However,the extant literature only emphasizes the importance of knowledge to dynamic capability.With the increasingly obvious heterogeneity and fuzziness of knowledge,the conflict between needs for new knowledge and organizational behavior is to be prominent.Moreover,the research on how to transform new knowledge into dynamic capability is a long way to be gone.Based on the routine-based view,Eisenhardt & Martin(2000)pointed that dynamic capability is the collection of a series of routines.And routine becomes an important element to explain the transformation of knowledge to dynamic capability.Due to the instantaneity and complexity of the environment,organizational routines also need to be changed to reduce the mismatch between organizational behavior and environmental changes.Thus,routine updating arises at the historic moment and becomes a new node affecting the relationship between knowledge creation and dynamic capability.Based on the constant updating of routines,the newly created knowledge of enterprises is gradually transformed into the dynamic ability to cope with changes.Therefore,it is of great value to explore the impact of routine updating on the relationship between knowledge creation and dynamic capability.The research concerning knowledge creation has risen recently,and scholars have paid more attention to it.There are many studies focus on the influence of organizational culture,leader behavior and ability,enterprise orientation,organizational learning,and other internal elements on knowledge creation.But the research on which factors affect knowledge creation from the perspective of inter-organizational view is also insufficient.Knowledge creation is a relatively systematic concept,which is not only influenced by the original knowledge stock of the enterprise but also promoted by referring to external resources.It is necessary to break the traditional pattern of internal resources solidification and make timely use of inter-organizational resources to create new knowledge.However,obtaining external resources for knowledge creation is uncertain and risky.It is difficult for enterprises to effectively obtain knowledge from the outside by relying on their own strength.The existence of social capital eliminates the fuzziness of acquiring external knowledge resources.It can provide suitable conditions and resources for enterprises to implement knowledge creation.Social capital is the resource that individuals or organizations owned in social relationships(Inkpen & Tsang,2016).At the same time,the current Chinese cultural background and economic upgrading provide a suitable condition for this study.For traditional Chinese culture,people and even different organizations attach great importance to different social relations.For an organization,social relations are embodied in formal and informal links between different actors,which will guarantee the normal operation of the organization.According to the above-mentioned background,this study explores the relationships among social capital,knowledge creation,routine updating,and dynamic capability based on social capital theory,knowledge management theory,routine-based view,and dynamic capability theory in the context of changing environment.There are two main lines: social capital—knowledge creation and knowledge creation—dynamic capabilities.This paper focused on three questions: Are there any correlations between different dimensions of social capital and whether there are differences in the influencing paths of knowledge creation;whether knowledge creation plays an intermediary role between social capital and dynamic capacity;Boundary conditions for knowledge creation affecting dynamic capabilities(Moderating effects of routine updating).To solve these questions,we use the questionnaire survey method to obtain 375 valid questionnaires,and comprehensively use software such as SPSS22.0,AMOS21.0,LISERL8.70,and PROCESS3.2 to analyze the data.The main conclusions of this study are:(1)The different dimensions of social capital are inter-locked with each other.And they have different influences paths on knowledge creation.Different dimensions of social capital affect knowledge creation in different ways.Structural social capital affects cognitive and relational social capital positively.And cognitive social capital effects relational social capital positively.At the same time,structural and relational social capital has a significant positive effect on knowledge creation respectively.There is no positive relationship between cognitive social capital and knowledge creation,but cognitive and relational social capital has a chain intermediary between the structural social capital and knowledge creation.(2)Knowledge creation plays an intermediary role between social capital and dynamic capabilities,and the intermediary role of knowledge creation is based on cognitive social capital and relational social capital.In other words,cognitive and relational social capital and knowledge creation are chain mediators between structural social capital and dynamic capabilities,and relational social capital and knowledge creation can also be chain mediators between structural social capital and dynamic capabilities.(3)Knowledge creation has a significant positive effect on dynamic capabilities,and routine updating plays a positive moderated role in the relationship between knowledge creation and dynamic capabilities.The research conclusions can enrich and improve existing theoretical and practical research.New ideas are as followed:First,the internal structure of social capital and its structural influence on knowledge creation are fully analyzed,which enriches social capital theory.Existing research suggests that there are no relationships among structural,cognitive,relational social capital.And these three dimensions influence the knowledge management process directly,such as structural social capital and knowledge transfer(Filieri & Alguezaui,2011),cognitive social capital,and knowledge absorption(Garcia-Villaverde et al.,2018),relational social capital and knowledge sharing.It ignores the correlation among the three and fails to fully reveal the internal structure of social capital,and thus fails to explore the structural impact of social capital on knowledge creation.Based on social capital theory,this paper analyzes different paths of social capital on knowledge creation focusing on the internal structure of social capital and special relationships among structural,cognitive,and relational social capital,knowledge creation,which deepen the understanding of the theory of social capital.Second,this study takes knowledge creation as a key variable connecting social capital and dynamic capabilities,focuses on the mediating role of knowledge creation between social capital and dynamic capabilities,and clarifies the mechanism of social capital on dynamic capabilities.Most studies emphasize the direct influence of different dimensions of social capital on dynamic capabilities(Blyler & Coff,2003;Zheng et al.,2011;Lee et al.,2018),the role of knowledge creation as a bridge between social capital and dynamic capabilities is ignored.From the view of resources-behavior-ability,this paper focuses on the mediated effect of knowledge creation between social capital and dynamic capabilities,which will make up for the deficiency of knowledge management and dynamic capability.Third,the concept of routine updating is introduced as a regulating variable between knowledge creation and dynamic capabilities,which is helpful to promote the boundary conditions research of dynamic capabilities.At present,more studies focus on the relationship between knowledge attributes,knowledge management process,and dynamic capabilities(Bitencourt et al.,2020;Lu et al.,2018).However,how knowledge is transformed into dynamic capabilities and the invisible role of organizational routine are ignored.From a routine-based view,in line with dynamic capability theory,routine updating is introduced into the path of knowledge creation on dynamic capability in this study.The boundary conditions of knowledge creation on dynamic capability are also clarified.Moreover,the dynamic capability theory is also enriched in this study.