Theoretical exploration: perspectives on social capital, learning and knowledge productivity

This chapter explores relevant literature describing the interaction between knowledge productivity, learning and social capital theory. Given today’s division of labor and the accompanying fragmentation and specialization, knowledge productivity is a fundamental means to achieving collective outcomes that maintain competitive advantage. Knowledge productivity is based on powerful learning processes. There is increasing evidence that learning is inherently a social and situated process that is strongly impacted by characteristics of social capital (Field, 2008; Van Der Sluis & De Jong, 2009). Social capital makes any cooperative group into more than a collection of individuals that only focus on achieving their own private purposes. Social capital connects the dots between people as it aims to understand productive relations. The main proposition of this chapter is that in a knowledge society, the competitive advantage of organizations depends on their ability to adapt to a changing environment through the continuous generation and application of new knowledge (Harrison & Kessels, 2004). Knowledge productivity focuses on these innovation processes. Knowledge productivity is the process of identifying, gathering and interpreting relevant information, using this information to develop new abilities, and applying these abilities to improve and radically innovate work processes, products and services (Kessels, 1995, 2001b). Knowledge productivity as a research concept brings together notions of innovation and learning (Verdonschot, 2009). For this reason, it is a helpful concept as it focuses on the process of learning that is strongly related to specific improvements and innovations of work processes, products and services.