An Empirical Study of the Effects of Social Capital on Inter-firm Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Performance

In this paper, we use social capital theory to discuss the transfer of knowledge between firms, aiming to verify whether or not social capital may be considered as a critical factor of knowledge transfer and innovation performance. We constructed a theoretical model to analysis the impact of social capital on inter-firm knowledge transfer and innovation performance. The model consists of independent variables (the three dimensions of social capital), intermediate variables (knowledge transfer), dependent variables (innovation performance of enterprises) and the corresponding relationships between these variables. Our findings confirm that all the dimensions of social capital is positively associated with inter-firm knowledge transfer and innovation performance.