The Role of Social Intelligence in Acquiring External Knowledge for Human Capital Development, Organisational Learning, and Innovation

Social intelligence can be interpreted as one’s tacit knowledge, ability, and skills to sense and understand the needs of external stakeholders, and constantly interact appropriately with the stakeholders for the benefits of the firm. Based on 25 qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews across 15 Australian organisations, this chapter examines the role of social intelligence and argues that social intelligence acts as a catalyst to external knowledge acquisition, which can have a dynamic influence on human capital and organisational learning that lead to innovation in organisations. The analysis also reveals that the participants’ understandings of social intelligence were different from those contained in the literature. This chapter argues that the implications of the theory-practice divide of social intelligence in organisations cannot be undermined, and a better understanding of the concept is necessary if knowledge management, organisational learning, and an intellectual capital-view of the firm are to be fully integrated.