The Effect of Social capital on Emotional-Cognitive Readiness for Scientific Collaboration: The Mediating Role of Psychological Capital

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of social capital on the emotional-cognitive readiness of faculty members for scientific collaborations with the presence of a mediation of psychological capital.

This practical research was conducted in an analytic-survey method. The statistical population consisted of all faculty members of two medical universities in Iran (709 people), and the sample size is calculated to be 250 people. The stratified and random sampling method was used. All data for this study were collected using three standard questionnaires: (a) Nahapiet and Ghoshal's social capital questionnaire, (b) emotional-cognitive readiness questionnaire, and (c) Lathan's psychological capital questionnaire. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to check the normality of data distribution. Spearman correlation and Structural equation modelling (SEM) were used to analyze and test hypotheses using PLS 3 and SPSS version 25.

The results showed that social capital and psychological capital and their dimensions affect cognitive-emotional readiness for scientific collaboration. Also, the findings indicate that the level or the degree at which social capital alone contributes to cognitive-emotional readiness is weaker than when it is mediated by psychological capital.

Through the creation and development of social and psychological capital, university administrators can gradually create a common language and, as a result, common insight among faculty members to provide the basis for more scientific collaboration.