Employing Individuals' Social Capital to Create Value in the Public Sector Organisations

Social capital provides individuals with access to knowledge. Knowledge Management (KM) research recognises the importance of individuals’ social capital in problem solving and innovation. However, while discussing the link between social capital and value creation, the literature seems ambitious in portraying that social capital can create new knowledge and drive innovation in firms. The authors argue that social capital can provide access to knowledgeable individuals but purposeful knowledge collaboration needs to be arranged by knowledge workers according to their specific knowledge needs. In this chapter, the authors discuss how public sector knowledge workers can utilise their social capital to create value for their organisation. The chapter presents a task-based knowledge collaboration model to improve performance and innovation capability of the public sector organisations. The model suggests that public sector organisations should support and encourage cross-organisational knowledge collaboration through informal (personal) networking of employees.