An empirical study of the relationship between team social capital and knowledge transfer: Mediating role of transactive memory system

Abstract

Team social capital is considered to be a key factor promoting team effectiveness of knowledge transfer, while it still lacks systematic theoretical analysis and empirical research on the internal mechanism of how social capital affecting team knowledge transfer in existing researches. This paper introduces transactive memory system as a mediator and study whether and how social capital affecting team knowledge transfer through transactive memory system. Research model is analyzed through Structural Equation Model (SEM) based on the investigation on project teams of 23 offshore software outsourcing undertaken enterprises and the questionnaire survey data of 93 project manager. Results show that transactive memory system plays a significant mediating role between the relationship of social capital and team knowledge transfer, and it is an effective way to facilitate team knowledge transfer and improve team performance through social capital.