Literature Review for Social Capital in Social Network Sites

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to describe a process to identify a research gap and a literature gap in the social capital theory. The paper observed different databases to identify relevant literature for the research field. The method has been quantitative, that means the articles with relevant key words are counted including the number of used keywords for the article as an indication for importance of the article. The qualitative part has been reading the identified articles as “key words” can have different meanings to avoid biases. The results of the paper are analyzed and give an overview about the social capital literature in the research subject. This paper provides an answer to research gaps in the literature and explains difficulties that have to be taken into consideration to avoid biases. The literature review is an important part of the scientific work and helps researchers with their work.

The paper identifies many papers with social capital and human resources. This means social capital provides explanations for the causal mechanism in the scientific field of human resources. A further finding is that social capital and recruiting is a well-prepared field. The research field of social network members who are using their social network sites to identify with their social capital employment opportunities is not available in important databases. The conclusion is that the research gap exists.