Social Capital and Value Creation: A Replication of ‘The Role of Intrafirm Networks’ by Wenpin Tsai and Sumantra Ghoshal

Abstract

Social sciences researchers commend the scientists in the field of natural science for their history of replication and reproduction of scientific research. Such advocates for replication warn that business research is frequently built on a foundation that is ever evolving and necessitates the replicating of theoretical work. Following this logic, this paper is a replication of the celebrated 1998 article by Tsai and Ghoshal, Social capital and value creation: The role of intrafirm networks. Replication was conducted utilizing Structural Equation Modeling. The data was collected by the original researchers through a survey administered by mail. The survey comprised questions rated using a Likert scale. Findings mostly support Tsai and Ghoshal’s results with the exception of the relationships among constructs measuring trustworthiness, resource combination and sharing, and product innovation. Utilizing the before-mentioned constructs and the same analysis as Tsai and Ghoshal--structural equation modeling (SEM); the replicated model presented in this paper shows a non-recursive relationship versus Tsai and Ghoshal’s recursive model. All in all, we contend that the replicated model presented in this paper agrees with current literature and is a more comprehensive model than the one offered by Tsai and Ghoshal.