Relationship between Team Social Capital and Knowledge Transfer: The Mediated Effect of TMS

Abstract

Team social capital is considered to be a key factor to facilitate team knowledge transfer, previous researches explored the direct effect of social capital on knowledge transfer, but there is still lack of systematic theoretical analysis and empirical research on the internal mechanism of how social capital affects team knowledge transfer. By introducing transactive memory system (TMS) as a medium variable, this paper studied whether and how team social capital affects team knowledge transfer through TMS. Drawing on social capital theory and TMS theory, we examined how social capital dimensions (structural, cognitive and relational) affect team knowledge transfer and the mediated effect of TMS dimensions (specialization, credibility, coordination) between social capital and team knowledge transfer. Results showed that in order to transfer knowledge more effectively, teams should take measures to build social capital thus to promote the development of TMS.