Empirical research on how social capital influence inter-organizational information systems value co-creation in China

ABSTRACT

Previous literature revealed that the lack of knowledge resources and the existence of an assimilation gap may be responsible for the high failure rate in the Inter-Organizational Information Systems (IOS) post-adoption stage of value co-creation. Drawing on social capital theory and knowledge-based theory, this paper aims to explore how structural (social interaction), relational (trust), and cognitive (shared IOS vision) capital influences knowledge acquisition among key partners and further improves IOS assimilation and value co-creation. The hypotheses, proposed in this work, were tested by partial least squares (PLS) analysis of 150 sets of survey data conducted in Chinese companies. The obtained results suggest that all three aspects of social capital have an indirect, yet significant influence on IOS assimilation and IOS value co-creation. This study argues that, knowledge acquisition plays a fully mediating role in structural capital and relational capital effect on IOS assimilation and IOS value co-creation. From the same stance, it adds that knowledge acquisition has a partial mediation effect on the cognitive capital-IOS assimilation link and cognitive capital-IOS value co-creation link. Moreover, the work at hand presumes that, if implemented effectively, IOS assimilation sets fourth IOS value co-creation.

KEYWORDS:

• Social capital
• knowledge acquisition
• IOS assimilation
• IOS value co-creation
• China

Acknowledgements

Our thanks go to the National Science Fund of China (Grant Number: 71701093; 71972061), the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (Grant Number: 20GLC013) and the Soft Science Research Programme of Jiangsu Province (Grant Number: BR2020093) for their support. We extend our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful comments on previous versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

The authors hereby declare that, to the best of their knowledge, there is no conflict of interest engendering from or throughout this work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mingming He

Mingming He, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Nanjing Tech University in China, and a visiting scholar of the University of Arizona (2018.10–2019.10). Her research interests include Information Systems and User Behaviour, Social Networks, and Knowledge Sharing. She has more than 10 articles in Journal of Management Science, Studies in Science of Science, Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (2019), and many more.

Tienan Wang

Tienan Wang, Ph.D., is a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology in China. His areas of research include Information System Adoption and Assimilation, Information System Strategic Planning. He has published more than 50 manuscripts across these fields in renowned journals such as in Management World, Journal of Management Science, Management Review, etc. He is also the recipient of many awards including the Social Science Achievements Award in Hei longjiang Province Award (2002, 2007, 2018).

Houxue Xia

Houxue Xia, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Nanjing Tech University in China, and a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore (2017.09–2018.09). His research focuses on business ethics and innovation management. He has published some articles across these areas, including works in the Journal of Academy of Business and Economics, Energy & Environment, Finance & Trade Economics, Science Research Management, etc.

Jing Dai

Jing Dai, Bachelor, is a postgraduate master’s student at Nanjing Tech University in China.