Designing a strategic ecosystem model for academic social capital in Iran's health system

Social capital is defined as a set of environmental characteristics and social relations that lead to the achievement of common goals and interests within the organization. To achieve its goals, the university of medical sciences must adopt an appropriate social capital model.

This research is developmental and applied in terms of purpose and qualitative in terms of data nature. Social capital shaping factors were classified using interpretive structural modeling (ISM), and the factors were stratified using cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis. The population of this research consisted of faculty members from  Iran University of  Medical Sciences, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Sampling was conducted using a theoretical method, and a total of 15 professors were interviewed until data saturation.

The dimensions of social capital include identity at level 1, trust and commitments at level 2, common language, identifiers, and culture at level 3, network links at level 4, configuration of network relationships and proper organization at level 5, and norms at level 6.

The dimensions of configuration of network relations, proper organization, and norms were placed in the driver cluster, which includes variables with the lowest power of dependence and the highest power of influence. It is suggested that universities clearly define the norms; create a flexible structure; develop stronger bonds among employees; broden networking; emphasize the commonalities among employees; provide clarification; promote group learning, and foster trust and commitment among employees.