Social Capital and the Creation of Knowledge

1. Social Capital and the Creation of Knowledge Claudia Gonzalez-Brambila Francisco Veloso David Krackhardt INFORMS, November 2006

2. Outline • Introduction • Objective • The data • Importance • The models • Results • Conclusions

3. Introduction “Social capital metaphor is that people who do better are somehow better connected” • Critical question is what is social capital? • Coleman (1988): Actors in embedded networks have superior achievements • Members obtain more coordination, they trust each other and develop better communication skills. • Burt (1992): Actors in open social structures with many structural holes, do better • Members can take advantage of “bridges” to connect with new members in other clusters, and get access to new information

4. Introduction • Growing importance of production, dissemination and use of knowledge • Little understanding of what determines how such crucial knowledge is created • The interaction between individuals plays a critical role – social capital • Growing attention to the role of collaborative effort in the process of scientific knowledge generation

5. Objectives • Paper examines the relationship between social capital and knowledge creation • Knowledge creation is research output and impact in the area of Natural Sciences • Creation process measured using publications and citations in ISI – Web of Science • Social capital is measured through co-authorship

6. The Data • Data from SNI – National System of Researchers in Mexico • Information on 1,704 researchers in Natural Sciences that have been part of the SNI from 1991 to 2002 • Information on all their publications in ISI Web of Science from 1981 to 2002 • Publications per year • Citations per year • Authors per publication

7. Importance • Study enables analysis of most critical aspects of social capital: • Embeddedness • Positioning • Network Structure • Considers panel data with entire network • Study outside developed world - Mexico

8. Critical Aspects of Social Capital • Relational dimension: • Direct ties • Strengths of direct ties • Structural dimension • Density • Structural holes • Centrality • External-Internal index in terms of fields of knowledge

9. The Models • Dependent variables: • Number of publications • Number of cites in the subsequent 4 years • Methods: • Negative Binomial fixed effects • Pit = F (Xit-1, ci, uit) • Xit-1: varies in both dimensions • number of direct ties, strength of direct ties, structural holes, density, normalized eigenvector (centrality), external-internal index, • Controls – past reputation and output, time • ci: individual unobserved effect • uit: error • Times: t-> 2 years; t-1 -> 3 years

10. Some Results *** significant at 0.1%, ** significant at 1%, * significant at 5%

11. Conclusions • Factors of social capital that consistently enhance productivity and impact: • Number of direct ties • Non dense networks • Influence output productivity, not impact • Centrality • Collaboration with researchers in other disciplines • Influence impact but not output productivity • Strenght of Direct ties

12. Conclusions • The structural holes variable is not significant when other variables are included • This variable has been used as the main measure of social capital • It is critical to control for various dimensions of social capital, as well as for unobserved individual heterogeneity

13. Questions, Comments, Suggestions Thank you