Conceptualizing the Impact of Social Capital on Knowledge Creation: Mediating Roles of Socialization and Externalization in a Multi-Stakeholder Agricultural Innovation Platform

In a collaborative knowledge creation environment knowledge is socially constructed and the nature of knowledge being shared, integrated and converted is dominantly tacit. Achieving the required level of exchange, proliferation and extraction of tacit knowledge in a social network context is intimately tied to social capital and the socialization and externalization modes of knowledge conversion. Empirical support is scarce on how social capital dynamically influences socialization and externalization and the knowledge creation outcomes. Through an in-depth field study to be conducted in two multistakeholder innovation platforms in Ethiopia, this research-in-progress will examine how social capital impact the knowledge creation outcomes with mediating roles of socialization and externalization. Therefore, this study addresses the following two research questions: How do multiple stakeholders interact and create knowledge in a collaborative agricultural innovation platform? How do factors of social capital impact socialization and externalization processes and then the knowledge creation outcome?