The Role of Organizational Social Capital in Performance Management

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of organizational social capital and connects it to research on performance management, providing a conceptual definition and discussing related measurement issues. The article theorizes that structural (“social interaction”), relational (“trust”), and cognitive (“common goals”) organizational social capital foster the use of performance information and thereby relates social capital to an outcome variable that has recently received much attention in research on performance management reforms. The article bridges performance management studies to the broader organizational science literature, pointing out a gap in prior work and setting the stage for further research.