Creating social and intellectual capital through IT career transitions

Many organizations must continuously innovate with information technology (IT) to maintain their competitive position. This paper illustrates how the Clarica Life Insurance Company created a stream of business-enabling IT innovations after more than 70 career transitions of IT people into line business positions. The theoretical lens used to discuss this case is the Nahapiet and Ghoshal theory of co-creation of social and intellectual capital. After presenting the Clarica case study with three management profiles, we interpret the data to show how social capital led to an increase in intellectual capital and the organizational advantage that was achieved. We conclude with suggestions for extensions of this model and implications for research and practice.