A Canonical Correlation Analysis of Social Capital and Knowledge Exchange for Virtual Members of IT Teams

摘要

Social capital theory conceptualized social capital as key to connecting team members into the flow of valued resources and activities, with knowledge deemed one of the most valuable of these resources. Yet, the literature found teams struggle to effectively share knowledge. This quantitative survey-based study assessed the interrelationship between social capital and knowledge sharing for individuals working on virtual teams using a canonical correlation analysis. The literature showed most of the statistical techniques used did not explore how the subscales of social capital and knowledge sharing variables themselves may be interacting. This study examined if modeling the constructs using canonical correlation analysis (CCA) may reveal the degree to which the social capital and knowledge sharing variable subsets influenced each other. CCA is a multivariate technique of discriminant analysis producing simultaneous comparisons between sets of variables while making the fewest prior empirical assumptions about the relationship between variables, a potential weakness of other models relying on predictive analyses using a univariate dependent variable. The research question for this study was: To what extent do the dimensions of social capital, defined as (a) structural capital, (b) relational capital, and (c) cognitive capital, explain the dimensions of knowledge sharing, defined as (d) sharing norms for the group, (e) intention to share, and (f) attitude toward sharing for individuals currently working virtually as members of an IT project team? The population identified for this study included knowledge workers currently employed in professional settings on virtual project teams within the IT industry. The canonical correlation analysis found all three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational, and cognitive capital) were highly and significantly correlated with two dimensions of the knowledge sharing dimensions (attitude toward sharing and intention to share). This study suggests all three dimensions of social capital influence sharing behaviors. Future research should continue to evaluate the correlation between the variables of social capital to ascertain if empirical models should include all three dimensions.