Social capital: the missed component of knowledge management

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Today knowledge is recognized as one of the valuable organizational assets and the main source of competitive advantage, transferring and applying knowledge is of crucial importance. But what is often neglected is the social nature of required context on which the mentioned processes must be accomplished. Social capital as an organizational resource helps in providing such a context. In the paper, knowledge is the context of organization will be introduced and different dimensions and elements of knowledge management as a strategy to achieve competitive advantage will be explained. Furthermore, different type of social capital, its main dimensions and its role in knowledge management will be described. Social relations enable the organizations to access to valuable knowledge bases. Social capital makes it possible to create intellectual capital through impacting the conditions needed to acquire (capture) and transfer knowledge. Finally, the role of social capital in providing the suitable conditions to access knowledge sharing and promotion in the organizations will be discussed.