Examining the impact of organizational culture on social capital in a research based organizations

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational culture (OC) on social capital (SC) between experts of research-based industrial organizations who were aware of the subject of research.

Design/methodology/approach

The tools in this study were the native and modified questionnaire of Denison OC model with 33 items and Abili’s developed questionnaire based on Nahapiet and Ghoshal model for SC with 24 items. Validity of questionnaire well approved based on face validity method by experts, specialists and professors of management. Using the results of pre-test, Cronbach’s alpha was showed the very high reliability. Because of the low number of experts, we did not sampling and decided to distribute questionnaires among all of them. In all, 120 completely filled questionnaires were returned out of the 134 distributed. For examining the main hypothesis and sub-hypothesis of this study simple linear regression and multiple regression analysis were used.

Findings

The results of regression analysis showed that regression line ascribes changes in dependent variable (SC) to independent variable (OC). It means that in research-based industrial organizations, OC has a significant positive impact on SC and cultural traits with internal focus have more impact on SC than those with external focus. Then, with the use of parametric tests, the relationship between OC and SC and between components of OC and SC was investigated. Finally, Pearson correlation tests results confirmed the significant relationships. Overall, the results of this study show the significant, positive, strong relationship between OC and SC.

Originality/value

As there are not many studies about the impact of OC on SC, this paper’s findings will be useful to assess and improve the cultural situation for increasing the SC in organization.

Citation

Ramezan, M. (2016), "Examining the impact of organizational culture on social capital in a research based organizations", VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Vol. 46 No. 3, pp. 411-426. https://doi.org/10.1108/VJIKMS-12-2014-0065