The downside of organizational social capital in group knowledge creation: A study of Chinese high-tech organizations

This paper develops a measurement of organizational social capital by using three constructs - general trust, density of trust network and network structures. In the empirical testing of 67 separate groups, general trust had a very significant impact on group knowledge creation, while dense trust network had only indirect influence on a groupʹs performance. One of the downsides of organizational social capital (OSC), fragmented structure caused by ganging-up, produced negative effects on general trust, and indirectly influenced knowledge creation, too. On the other hand, the other downside of OSC, the structure of power concentration, is not evidenced to be harmful for knowledge sharing and brainstorming.