Relational Capital and Individual Exploration: Unravelling the Influence of Goal Alignment and Knowledge Acquisition

Abstract

We investigate how the relational capital of a person within an organization affects the extent to which she or he conducts exploration activities. Our theory separates out a negative effect that comes from aligning goals with other organizational members from a positive effect that stems from acquiring knowledge from them. Our data from 150 members of the R&D teams of three leading R&D-intensive firms support the theoretical model. By developing and testing this theory, we contribute to the literature on exploration, which lacks understanding of the antecedents of individual exploration in organizations. We also contribute to relational capital literature, which has focused on organizational and group-level exploration, but which has shown inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between relational capital and exploration. A reason for this may be that this body of research has emphasized positive effects of relational capital for exploration only, and has not accounted for the different mechanisms that mediate the effects of relational capital on individual exploration activities. Our theory offers a more comprehensive view by explaining how relational capital may provide both benefits and liabilities to individual exploration activities.

The Conjoint Influence of Top and Middle Management Characteristics on Management Innovation

“…However, different forms of innovation have different paths for realization and adoption. Most notably, technological innovation tends to follow a bottom-up process that is nurtured by variance-increasing behaviors of MM, such as the exploration and championing of autonomous initiatives (Burgelman, 1983; Mom, van Neerijnen, Reinmoeller, & Verwaal, 2015). MI, on the other hand, follows a top-down approach (Damanpour & Aravind; Khanagha et al, 2013), where we have highlighted the importance of variance-reducing behaviors grounded in alignment between TM and MM.…”

Does social capital matter for supply chain resilience? The role of absorptive capacity and marketing-supply chain management alignment

“…Firms that align and unify their organizational structures and activities can be effective in orchestrating their supply chains and managing knowledge embedded in these networks (Möller & Svahn, 2003). In particular, organizational processes of assimilation and transformation of external knowledge gained by social capital require shared practices and coordination between the firm's marketing and SCM functions even if alignment may not be fundamental to initial acquisition of exploratory knowledge (Mom et al, 2015). Accordingly, external information can be best coded and decoded into knowledge when firms' organizational functions and processes are aligned.…”

Balancing innovation and exploitation in the fourth industrial revolution: Role of intellectual capital and technology absorptive capacity

“…In this regard, relational or social capital is considered as the bond that is formed with organizational relationships with stakeholders, and that impacts the lives of the organization. Researchers (e.g., Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001 ; Kang et al., 2007 ; Mom et al., 2015 ; Mubarik et al., 2016 ) explain relational or social capital as being a blend of different relationships such as market relationships, power relationships and cooperation. RC encompasses trust, stronger understanding, collaboration and the relationship among the strategic partners in this regard, and it characterizes interactions, connection stocks, closeness, linkages, loyalty, and goodwill between an organization and downstream clients, upstream suppliers, external stakeholders, and strategic partners ( Lazzarotti et al., 2017 ; Mubarik et al., 2019a , Naghavi and Mubarak, 2019 ).…”

“…Relational/social capital also establishes itself in the associated ties that ambidexterity can develop with external parties (e.g., alliance partners, suppliers, customers and consumers). Connecting such ties enables ambidexterity to both improve and renew their knowledge base by having superior potential control and access to over a various range of perspectives, specialized knowledge and skills ( Mom et al., 2015 ; Tiwana, 2008 ). Accordingly, we theorize that a relational/social capital will promote the pursuit of ambidextrous learning activities by developing a perspective that supports access to and combination of diverse skills and knowledge both within and across the confines of ambidexterity.…”