Examining the relationship between social capital and knowledge usage in the nonprofit industry

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between social capital and knowledge usage through the prerequisites embedded in internal and external social links necessary for knowledge to be applied. The methodology applied in this paper is based on a survey conducted among 215 nonprofit organisations from the European Union and the Western Balkans that implement international and local development projects, a desk research and in-depth interviews. The results reveal that nonprofit organisations are more inclined to links that come internally from individuals of similar relational, cognitive and nodal features while external social capital and structural features represent a field that should be further developed in the context of knowledge usage. This paper empirically documents the relationship between social capital and knowledge usage in nonprofit organisations, being one of the rare studies of that kind in the nonprofit industry and the social capital and knowledge management research.