The Effective Factors of Strengthening the Relationships between the Members of Collaborative Networks from the Social Capital Perspective

Abstract

Many investments in research and development have been made to stimulate the formation of cooperative relations and have significantly improved economic growth and the performance of the national innovation system. Numerous studies have already been conducted on relationships between members of the networks; however, there are gaps such as insufficient attention to government actors in these studies. The present study seeks to develop a model for strengthening relationships between the members of social capital theory-oriented collaborative networks of science and technology in Iran so that the nature of members of the network also considered in terms of their being public or private. It is a case study, and the members of the nanotechnology laboratory network are the statistical population. In the first step, factors that influence the strengthening of relationships between the members of the network were identified through a literature review (Related to social capital theory) and adjusted by the experts’ consensus. Then using the interpretive structural modeling, those factors were compared and prioritized within ternary compositions of private-private, private-public, and public-public. The results show that the factors of programs and policies of network management, the experience of previous relationships, and the duration of membership are three radical factors in different compositions of public-public, private-public, and private-private. Also, the factor of programs and policies of network members is a radical and influential one in the public-public composition.