Relational and Cognitive Social Capital: Their Influence on Strategies of External Knowledge Acquisition

This paper tries to analyze the relationship between external knowledge acquisition strategies and the relational social capital generated by firms in their relationships networks. The study is based on an empirical research applied to a sample of Spanish companies from biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The paper mainly focuses on the effect of trust, as the basic component of relational social capital, on two types of knowledge acquisition strategies: alliances and direct purchases of external knowledge. Moreover, this paper proposes an interaction effect of a company's cognitive social capital on the relationships between relational social capital and alliances as a method of knowledge acquisition. The argument is that shared visions and common values could moderate the relationship between trust and the acquisition based on narrower relationships between agents. The results of the study show that, although relational social capital has a significant influence on both types of strategies (alliances, direct purchases), such influence is more important for the case of alliances, although it is not finally affected by the interaction between cognitive and relational social capital.