Gaming the system: The effects of social capital as a resource for virtual team members

Increasingly individuals interact with one another through information and communication technologies in virtual teams. Leveraging the resource-based view of the firm and social capital theory, we examine how a team member's social capital (a resource) affects the team member's perception of the quality of knowledge shared within the team (a capability) and the benefits to the individual team member (an outcome). Using the context of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, we find that within virtual teams, relational and cognitive social capital contribute to knowledge quality, which in turn positively benefits the outcomes of individual team members.