Social Capital and Academic Research Performance: A Conceptual Model Proposal

Abstract

It is increasingly important for the academic community to know how social capital of research group members is building; higher levels of social capital could lead to researchers to have a higher number of publications and to improve the quality of these publications. Having a greater knowledge of the role of the different dimensions of social interactions in building internal and external social capital could help to improve the social capital of research groups. This paper offers a conceptual model in which the relationship between social capital embedded in research networks and the performance of researchers is established. To build the proposed model, this paper reviews of the major literature on social capital, drawing on previous theoretical approaches and the existing empirical evidence on the social capital construct and its effects.