THE ROLE OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN INTRAPRENEURSHIP OF HEALTH DEPARTMENT STAFF

An organization with high social capital can lead to blossoming of new ideas in people with impacts on information sharing and implicit and explicit knowledge transfer. The new ideas make creative people and this creates innovation and entrepreneurship in the organization in the same way. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between social capital and intrapreneurship in Health Department staff at Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences. This is a correlational descriptive study. The population consisted of 90 managers and experts at the Department of Health in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences selected by census sampling method. Data analyses were performed using SPSS software (version 16). Two valid questionnaires including social capital and intrapreneurship were used for data collecting. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) and analytic statistics (Spearman correlation coefficient) were used. Mean social capital was 101.04 of a total of 155 points. Among the dimensions of social capital, relational dimension with a mean 46 out of 70 and structural dimension a mean 36.21 out of 55 was obtained, respectively. The cognitive dimension, with an average of 18.83 total score out of 30 was the least average. The mean of the intrapreneurship was 97.11 out of 155. The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the social capital and its dimensions (cognitive, structural, and relational) with intrapreneurship (P<0.001). Information is exchanged more often in organizations with higher levels of participation, commitment, and trust. Finally, it makes the individual have a lot of time for thinking, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Keywords: Social capital, Intrapreneurship, Health