Collaborative Networks and Social Capital: A Theoretical and Practical Convergence

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of social capital analysis for collaborative networks. The objective of the research project is to understand how collaborative networks can be influenced considering the perspective of social capital. Initially, the authors identified and analyzed relevant works that were developed in the collaborative network field, focusing on the social capital approach. Therefore, nineteen papers have been selected from well-known journals basically extracted from the Business Source Premier Database. Thereafter, a tool for analyzing those papers has been developed. During evaluation, the authors considered twenty six aspects that can be divided into two major themes: the methodological and characterization approach and the theory of social capital and collaborative networks. As a result of this work, we conclude that a great variety of techniques to collect information exists, but that the difficulty of measuring social capital continues.