Social capital and knowledge transfer: A multi-level analysis

Abstract

This study explores how individual level and team level social capital characteristics manifest their joint influence on knowledge transfer, considering team social capital as a moderator between individual social capital and knowledge transfer. Situated in a post-training context, a survey of 390 individuals from 30 teams in a Chinese bank was conducted. Our results revealed that team social capital interacted with individual social capital in influencing knowledge transfer. At the individual level, distance and structural equivalence between the knowledge seeker and the knowledge source influenced how much knowledge was transferred between them. Furthermore, team network density mitigated the negative effect of distance on knowledge transfer, and team learning culture reduced the positive effect of structural equivalence on knowledge transfer. Theoretical implications based on the findings are drawn.