Study on the Relationship among Social Embeddedness, Tacit Knowledge Acquisition, and Job Performance

[[abstract]]This study investigated how an individual can acquire tacit knowledge from his partners in a workgroup by virtue of his social capital from the perspective of structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness. We adopt a multi-informants questionnaire design in order to avoid the bias resulted from self-reporting. Based on data collected from 183 respondents, the results indicate that structural embeddedness aspect of social capital does not necessarily lead to tacit knowledge acquisition unless the moderating effect of relational embeddedness aspect of social capital is taken into account. The relationship between social interaction and tacit knowledge acquisition is stronger among individuals having higher affect-best trust and shared values than among individuals having lower affect-best trust and shared values. Besides, positive relationship between tacit knowledge acquisition and job performance is also identified. Several managerial implications and research limitations are also proposed