Social capital, knowledge sharing, work meaningfulness and creativity: evidence from the Pakistani pharmaceutical industry
| Date | 07 July 2020 |
| Pages | 243-259 |
| Published date | 07 July 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0065 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & Finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Sabeen Hussain Bhatti,Dmitriy Vorobyev,Ramsha Zakariya,Michael Christofi |
Social capital, knowledge sharing,
work meaningfulness and
creativity: evidence from the
Pakistani pharmaceutical industry
Sabeen Hussain Bhatti
Department of Management Studies, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Dmitriy Vorobyev
Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University,
Yekaterinburg, Russia
Ramsha Zakariya
Capital University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan and
University of Lahore, Islamabad, Pakistan, and
Michael Christofi
School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
Abstract
Purpose –As an integral part of intellectual capital (IC), social capital (SC) has been studied as an asset crucial
to social relationships among individuals and groups of individuals, which in turn have a significant impact on
organizational performanceoutcomes. This study investigates the impact of organizational social capital (OSC)
on employee creativity through the mediation role of knowledge sharing (KS) and moderation of work
meaningfulness (WM).
Design/methodology/approach –The authors base the analysis on employee-level data gathered via a
cross-sectional survey designed for this study. The authors surveyed 217 employees of the pharmaceutical
industry in Pakistan. The authors run a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and use structural equation
modeling (SEM) and Hayes method to test the hypotheses.
Findings –The authors find that OSC positively affects employees’willingness to share their knowledge with
colleagues, which in turn has a positive effect on employee creativity (EC). The results also show that the
relationship between social capital and knowledge sharing is moderated by work meaningfulness.
Research limitations/implications –This study contributes to the IC in general and the SC literature in
particular, by providing empirical evidence that shows how creativity could be a focal and pivotal performance
outcome of organizational social capital through the moderated mediation roles of work meaningfulness and
knowledge sharing.
Originality/value –The authors adopt the concept of SC from the organizational level to the individual level,
examining how an individual’s perception of organizational capital influences his or her creative behavior and
exploring the role of KS and job meaningfulness (JM) in this relationship.
Keywords Social capital, Knowledge sharing, Work meaningfulness, Employee creativity
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The intellectual capital (IC) triad of structural, social and human capital (Berraies, 2019;Pedro
et al., 2018;Reed et al., 2006) has received the attention of researchers in recent years due to its
role in building innovative capabilities based on the utilization of internal and external
knowledge networks (Carnabuci and Di
oszegi, 2015;Ferraris et al., 2019;Heavey et al., 2015).
As an integral part of IC, social capital (SC) consists of embedded knowledge resources that
are accessible through networks of firm’s internal and external relations (Adler and Kwon,
2002;Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998;Reed et al., 2006). The theory of social capital posits SC a
Social capital and
creativity in
pharmaceuticals
243
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Received 29 February 2020
Revised 26 April 2020
26 May 2020
Accepted 15 June 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 2, 2021
pp. 243-259
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0065
critical asset for firms in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage (Buenechea-
Elberdin, 2017;Ortiz et al., 2018), improved performance (Andrews, 2010;Leana and Pil, 2006;
Kroll et al., 2019), employee engagement (Andrews and Mostafa, 2019) and knowledge
sharing (KS) (Garcia-Sanchez et al., 2019;Kim, 2018). In this paper, using employee level data,
we provide evidence suggesting that employee creativity (EC) is another important outcome
of SC within organizations and establish that KSand work meaningfulness (WM) play an
important role in this relationship.
Within the healthcare sector, pharmaceutical firms have been the focus of researchers in
relation to the factors required for improving the creativity of the employees (Griebel, 2017).
Being at the forefront of knowledge, pharmaceutical firms are more dynamic as compared to
firms belonging to the conventional industries, such as steel, due to the ever-changing nature
of technologies and the complex networks of pharmaceutical professionals. Thus, it is
important for such firms to have a full understanding and manage the constant flow of
knowledge in the value chain (Arora and Gambardella, 1994;Stuart et al., 2007).
Specifically, using the data from pharmaceutical firms in Pakistan, this study aims to
answer the following questions:
(1) What is the impact of the perception of organizational social capital on employee
creativity?
(2) Do mechanisms of knowledge sharing among employees affect the relationship
between organizational social capital and employee creativity?
(3) Does work meaningfulness play any moderation role in this mediated relationship?
We also adopt the concept of SC from the organizational level to the individual level,
examining how an individual’s perception of organizational capital influences his or her
participation in the KSand how this relationship is moderated by WM. We posit that
employees who have participated in social interactions and perceive their work to be
meaningful are most likely to share their knowledge among themselves which will improve
their creativity.
With this work, we contribute to the literature on IC in general and SC, in particular and in
multiple ways. First, while most of the existing literature focuses on employee engagement
and job satisfaction as performance outcomes of both IC and OSC, our study focuses on
creativity as another important and critical outcome, providing empirical evidence that
creativity could be a focal and pivotal performance outcome of organizational SC .
Second, while the majority of the existing literature studies the impact of organizational IC
at the macro level, relatively little is known about the exact mechanisms through which IC
affect employees at the micro level (Kroll et al., 2019). Our study sheds light on this issue at the
micro level, explicitly studying the relationship between perceived OSC and individual level
creativity and identifying KSas they key channel for it.
Third, by revealing the moderation role of WM in the relationship between organizational
SC and knowledge sharing, we further contribute for understanding the mechanisms which
underline the relationship between organizational SC and employees’outcomes.
Finally, with this paper, we respond to calls for more research on the relationship between
personality and creativity (Anderson et al., 2014) as well as to calls for more research on IC in
healthcare which remains scarce (Evans et al., 2015), especially beyond the Western setting.
Moreover, our study provides valuable insight and guidelines to practitioners in the
pharmaceutical industry, as regards to the ways of enhancing the creative behaviors of their
employees, through the introduction of policies and practices that support the development of
SC. Furthermore, our study findings also show that managers must focus on acquisition and
transfer of knowledge if they want to strengthen a creative environment for the employees.
JIC
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