Organizational Atmosphere For Nurturing Social And Intellectual Capital: A Case Study Of An It Services Vendor

An organization can be viewed as a social community specializing in speed and efficiency in the creation and transfer of knowledge. Organizational advantage accrues from the particular capabilities (social capital) organizations have for creating and sharing knowledge (intellectual capital). Based on existing research on the knowledge view and resource based view of an organization and the case studies from an IT services vendor, we propose a model for nurturing social and intellectual capital based on Szulanski’s (2003) framework. At the heart of the model is a five step process that leverages social capital in an organization to convert existing intellectual capital to new intellectual capital. The first step is initiation, the processes leading to the decision to transfer intellectual capital. The second step is implementation, the processes through which intellectual flows to the recipient from the source. The third step is ramp-up, the processes by which the recipient starts using transferred knowledge. The fourth step is integration, the processes by which the transferred knowledge becomes institutionalized. The process of incentivization runs across all the four processes mentioned earlier and motivates the source of intellectual capital to share it with the recipient. New intellectual capital helps organizations deliver customer value and leads to competitive advantage.