key: cord-0787954-5wchgj0p authors: Al-Omoush, Khaled Saleh; Ribeiro-Navarrete, Samuel; Lassala, Carlos; Skare, Marinko title: Networking and knowledge creation: Social capital and collaborative innovation in responding to the COVID-19 crisis date: 2022-03-18 journal: Journal of Innovation & Knowledge DOI: 10.1016/j.jik.2022.100181 sha: c4202bac84e8cc5092d723e9371a0608d19df97e doc_id: 787954 cord_uid: 5wchgj0p This study empirically explores the role of social capital in creating collaborative innovation and collective intelligence and maintaining organisational sustainability in the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis. Data were collected from a sample of 289 managers, directors and heads of departments of top 50 manufacturing firms in Jordan and analysed using Smart-PLS-SEM. The results indicate that social capital significantly impacts collaborative innovation, collective intelligence and organisation sustainability during the COVID-19 crisis. They also reveal that collective intelligence significantly impacts collaborative innovation and organisation sustainability. This study enriches the literature on social capital, collaborative innovation and collective intelligence. It elucidates the role of such dynamic capabilities in maintaining both organisational sustainability and the chance of recovery from unprecedented crises. The worldwide effects of COVID-19 have created unprecedented challenges for business organisations across all sectors and industries, forcing them to sense and respond innovatively. The term sustainability is used here to indicate an organisation's ability to exist in a highly competitive environment with strong competitors and to resist extreme crises that threaten its survival and growth (Meflinda et al., 2018) . The pandemic has caused one of the biggest environmental changes since the 1930s Great Depression (Heisbourg, 2020) . Collaboration and the coordination of physical and intellectual resources and capabilities have always been lifelines for organisations and partners in such turbulent environments. These collaborations and structures of coordination need stable and flexible social networks between all the actors in the environment, including competitors. Effective collaboration and coordination efforts rely mainly on high levels of relational assets that support common interests and value co-creation. Social capital has received more attention in recent decades, particularly within collaboration and innovation research. Research has also recently begun to view social capital as a potential protector against the problems caused by COVID-19 (Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020; Putra et al., 2020; Corrêa et al., 2021) . This intangible asset is one of the three principal constructs of intellectual capital. Social capital is widely acknowledged as an indispensable component of inter-organisational relationships (Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020) . It consists of the social networks of relationships, patterns, expectations and beliefs that promote interactive collaboration and coordination for mutual benefits (Putnam et al., 1994) . Therefore, it is understood to be a fundamental driver of collaborative and collective activities that contribute to the continuous development of the dynamic capabilities of organisations, such as collaborative innovation and collective intelligence. Innovation is a crucial dynamic capability for survival in reacting to unanticipated environmental developments and handling short and long-term risks and challenges (Gil-Alana et al., 2020; Hilmersson & Hilmersson, 2021) , and collaboration is recognised as an attribute of innovation. The social network approach considers innovation a result of collaborative knowledge exchanges and includes a wide diversity of participants in conditions of interdependence. Pinto (2020) concluded that, in more complex situations, such as the COVID-19 crisis, organisations strive for collaboration and coordinate their collective capabilities to explore innovative solutions in countering unpredictable changes. Recent literature confirms that the fluctuations of consumers' priorities and decisions, volatile under unpredictable uncertainties, force firms to improve their knowledge in collaboratively creating novel innovations based on their relational networks with business partners and other actors . COVID-19 has produced a risky and disruptive environment, threatening the long-term survival and sustainability of organisations. The highly complex, multifaceted challenges introduced by the pandemic force organisations to behave as adaptive human systems with diverse capabilities and expertise in order to preserve their sustainability and superiority. According to Nga and Liang (2010) , this adaptive behavior view adopts an innovative path to examine an organisation as an intelligent entity that strives for survival and growth through exploiting its intelligence. Garrido (2009) took intelligence to be the property of a collective. Based on the collaborative viewpoint, scholars (e.g., Staškevičiūtė et al., 2006; Elia et al., 2020) argue that organisations become intelligent only when they can create an outstanding level of collective intelligence. This adaptive dynamic capability is the collective ability of groups or organisations to use information and knowledge: that is, to think, solve problems, learn, generate and understand valuable complex ideas and plan for the future (Gan & Zhu, 2007; Yaseen et al., 2018) . There is still a need to explore the extent of the association between social capital and innovation, especially in unprecedented crises. More particularly, there is a gap in our knowledge around the role of social capital in creating collaborative innovation during turbulence and high instability in market demand (Ghahtarani et al., 2020) . Although extensive research has been done on social capital as a collaborative mechanism for improving dynamic capabilities in normal conditions, the literature lacks empirical evidence of whether social capital generates collective intelligence under the pressure of such crises as the COVID-19 epidemic. A previous research review also implies a lack of empirical studies linking social capital with the survival and sustainability of organisations. Neither have there been investigations empirically analysing the role of collaborative innovation and collective intelligence in preserving sustainability during crises threatening organisational survival. Aiming to fill this gap in the literature, this study aims to examine the role of social capital in creating the collaborative innovation and collective intelligence needed to preserve organisational sustainability during unique global crises, using the example of COVID-19. It also examines the role of collaborative innovation and collective intelligence in maintaining organisations' survival and sustainability. This study adds to the currently scarce literature on the role of social capital in developing dynamic capabilities, including collaborative innovation and collective intelligence, in responding to unprecedented crises. It also contributes to the literature on the forces driving organisational sustainability during crises threatening their survival. The COVID-19 shock has opened new horizons to re-examine, in light of the unprecedented worldwide crises, many of the theories, concepts and relationships addressed in the literature of management, organisation and collaborative relations. This crisis has invited us to address new areas of collaborative relations and their impact on developing the dynamic capabilities that enable firms to respond to the accelerating, erratic changes in the business environment. The COVID-19 crisis has prompted new ways of examining the determinants of organisational survival and sustainability, seeking more of the knowledge needed to control more of the factors influencing such crises. The literature has long considered social capital the foundation of collaboration between business environment actors, especially in crises and market turbulence (Akçomak & Ter Weel, 2009; Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Lins et al., 2019) . Most social capital definitions revolve around the capabilities and resources obtained through social relations, collective working and external ties rooted in organisations' social networks and used to achieve shared objectives (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Yeşil & Doğan, 2019) . Recently, scholars (e.g., Putra et al., 2020; Corrêa et al., 2021) have argued that social capital has played a significant role in responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Akçomak and Ter Weel (2009) claimed that social capital makes it possible to implement complex collaboration amongst organisations who share collective interests. Prior research (e.g., Adler & Kwon, 2002; Akçomak & Ter Weel, 2009; Aldrich & Meyer, 2015) has emphasised that every company has some degree of social capital. Yeşil & Doğan (2019) recently confirmed that further research is needed on the dynamics, implications and needs of social capital across different organisational contexts and environments. In highly competitive and uncertain environments, innovation has always been a recipe for survival and sustainability. The decisive role of innovation in the life and fate of organisations has prompted researchers and practitioners to take an interest in its determinants. Social capital has been a vital addition to innovation-creating factors. The literature contains many investigations of how social capital determines innovation Yeşil & Doğan, 2019; Corrêa et al., 2021) . Nowadays, innovation is considered the result of collaborative efforts rather than a novel work of a single entity (Krishnan et al., 2021) . Much of the literature confirms that most of the resources making for innovation spread beyond a single organisation's boundary. That is, external collaboration is a fundamental source of novel ideas, including new products, services, creative processes, new technologies and innovative solutions to unusual problems and challenges (Putnam et al., 1994; Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020) . According to Osborn and Hagedoorn (1997) , the resource-based theory implies that collaboration between business partners is needed for the development of various complementary capabilities, including innovation. Collaborative innovation describes an organisation's capability to create, integrate, and transform diverse knowledge, brainstorms, perspectives, and ideas into innovations in the context of value cocreation, which brings benefits for all participants (Skippari et al., 2017; Heil & Bornemann, 2018; . However, although the need for collaboration can prompt very close relationships between collaborative innovation and social capital, this potential relationship has received very little attention from previous studies, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, leaving a significant research gap. Collective intelligence has been of interest in several scientific disciplines for many years. Scholars have found that groups of individuals and organisations can bring more intelligence than independent actors to the search for speedy, efficient solutions to complex problems and to improvements in decision-making (Heylighen, 1999; Dumas, 2010; Pór, 2014) . Lykourentzou et al. (2011) argue that collective intelligence is primarily the application of the wisdom of crowds, the outcome of crowdsourcing. Heylighen (1999) confirmed that cognitive shortcomings and biases at the individual and organisational levels have significantly contributed to the search for emerging intelligent behaviours at collective levels. According to Pór (2014) , collective intelligence is perceived as the dissolution of the obstacles and boundaries engendered by individualism and the opportunity to exploit collective cognitive capabilities. The literature confirms that the developments in collaboration environments enabled by the advance of digital technologies have created the foundations for the emergence of the field of collective intelligence (Pór, 2014; Elia et al., 2020) . However, collaborative innovation, social capital, and collective intelligence share two features: that collaboration and the availability of mutual benefits for all participants enhance dynamic capabilities through value co-creation. Despite this, few empirical studies have explored the relationship between social capital, collective intelligence, and collaborative innovation. The literature confirms that organisations are increasingly exposed to crises and challenges that threaten their existence and sustainability (Tu, 2020; Krishnan et al., 2021) . COVID-19 has ended the lives of many companies, and many are still threatened. Sustainability in firms means their maintaining their survival and longterm continuity through their ability to adapt (Starik & Rands, 1995) . The literature on COVID-19 contains many recent studies examining the driving forces of business and supply chain sustainability under the pressures created by the epidemic (Ivanov, 2020; Sarkis, 2020; Srikalimah et al., 2020) . But no previous research has studied the relationship between social capital and sustainability, nor, in an integrated research model, the relationship between collaborative innovation and collective intelligence and sustainability COVID-19. proposes that social capital significantly impacts collaborative innovation, collective intelligence, and organisational sustainability. It also posits that collaborative intelligence and collective intelligence significantly impact organisational sustainability. This study also proposes that collaborative intelligence significantly impacts collaborative innovation. The literature recognises that enhancing levels of collaboration, where some form of social exchange is needed, contributes to better innovation outcomes (Landry et al., 2002; Yeşil & Doğan, 2019; Pinto, 2020) . There is a common belief that the level of social relations explains why collaborations succeed or fail to reach their expected outcomes (Malmström & Johansson, 2015; Steinmo & Rasmussen, 2018; Mignenan, 2021) . Social networking theory has provided a significant contribution on the role of collaborative relationships in innovative co-creation (Hardwick & Anderson, 2019) . The research suggests that establishing strong ties with business partners through social interactions critically affects firms' success in obtaining resources and capabilities for collaborative innovation (Steinmo & Rasmussen, 2018; Jiao et al., 2019; Méndez-Picazo et al., 2021) . Innovation co-creation is essentially a social process (Skippari et al., 2017) . According to Hardwick & Anderson (2019) , collaboration for co-creating innovation is a prime examplar of engagement as a deep relational connection in business relationships. Scholars have emphasised that the social capital approach has provided According to Heylighen (1999) , the limitations and biases of an individual's cognitive and epistemic capacities have been major reasons for the emergence of collective intelligence behaviour. Collective intelligence is a kind of socially constructed co-creation (Dellermann et al., 2020; Mignenan, 2021) . It consists of the relationships intelligence that fosters the sharing of individual intelligence in collaborative environments (Scarlat & Maries, 2009 ). This implies that organisations' social networks have an obvious role in generating collective intelligence. An interesting conceptualisation of collective intelligence sees it as having three dimensions: human, organisational and relational (Secundo et al., 2016; Mignenan, 2021) . Social capital encapsulates capabilities and resources deep-rooted in social relations and networks that facilitate collective actions. Ng and Liang (2010) show that network connectivity is necessary for sustaining robust collective intelligence. Several studies have shown that previous collaborative experience, existing networks, and many elements of social interaction are crucial determinants of collective intelligence success (Gan & Zhu, 2007; Pór, 2014; Mignenan, 2021) . Collective memory, the repository for stored information, generated intelligence, and accumulated knowledge that results from internal and external collaboration, is fundamental to the concept of collective intelligence (Gan & Zhu, 2007) . Li et al. (2019) asserted that strong network cohesion and social connections support the knowledge creation that forms collective intelligence. Based on collaboration and knowledge sharing, the dynamic community capability provided by collective intelligence can implement tasks or solve problems more effectively than individual firms (Mignenan, 2021) . Several scholars have indicated that knowledge sharing promotes collective intelligence (Lykourentzou et al., 2011; Pór, 2014) . Heylighen (1999) argued that the primary role of collective intelligence management is to facilitate the creation, transfer, and sharing of knowledge. It has also been claimed that collective intelligence is the knowledge shared through social networks, where organisations learn faster through sharing knowledge to improve their adaptative capacities . Given the effects of strong bonds and trust, many studies (e.g., Adler & Kwon, 2002; Steinmo & Rasmussen, 2018) have argued that relational social capital is the most vital element in facilitating collaborative knowledge transfer. The literature has acknowledged collective cognition-including adjusting participants' mutual understanding, sharing meaning, and constructing collective conceptual thinking-as a principal dimension of collective intelligence (Scarlat & Maries, 2009; Lykourentzou et al., 2011) . Several studies have recognised the capabilities of cognitive social capital and its role in sharing interpretations, narratives, meanings, common languages, and mutual understanding in order to develop and exchange knowledge (Steinmo & Rasmussen, 2018; Mignenan, 2021) . Collective intelligence is also principally responsible for the process of continuous collective learning as a way for adapting to unexpected situations and environmental changes (Ng & Liang, 2010) . Studies have also revealed that iterative social interactions are the primary enabling mechanisms of collaborative learning (Dellermann et al., 2020; Mignenan, 2021) . Therefore this study hypothesises: H2: Social capital significantly impacts collective intelligence. Many previous studies agree that a firm's failure or continued survival is mainly contingent on its intellectual capital capabilities (Hormiga et al., 2011; Conroy & Deller, 2020; Tu, 2020) . Social capital has been widely considered a strategic organisational asset in attaining superior sustainable performance and sustained value creation (Gligor et al., 2013; Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020) . Lo et al. (2021) also investigated how social capital assists firms to achieve and maintain sustainable competitive advantage. According to Conroy & Deller (2020) , social capital with strong networks and high levels of trust plays a pivotal role in reducing transaction costs and increasing information flow, thus enhancing business survival rates. Conroy and Deller (2020) confirmed that information flow in such networks strengthens conditions in start-up projects, thus increasing survival rates. Social capital is a significant determinant of continuity strategies in SMEs (Meflinda et al., 2018) . Corrêa et al. (2021) claimed that social capital helps to ensure the business's survival in crises and market volatilities. In today's evolving knowledge economy, corporate sustainability is contingent more on knowledge resources. Social capital exerts a critical impact in highly turbulent environments by empowering companies to employ accumulated knowledge swiftly and to acquire and integrate new knowledge, allowing them to respond rapidly to emerging threats or opportunities (Pinto, 2020) . However, Aldrich and Meyer (2015) The ability of an organisation to innovate is a function of its organisational intelligence (Staškevičiūtė et al., 2006) . Collective intelligence leverages the innovation potential of groups to convert opportunities into innovative solutions and ventures (Elia et al., 2020) . It consists in the activities of a large group of collaborating individuals, working as a single entity to produce higher-order intelligence, solutions, and innovations (Lykourentzou et al., 2011) . Mignenan (2021) confirms that collective intelligence leads to wiser decision-making, the co-generation of novel ideas and the co-construction of creative solutions, which are at the core of the collaborative innovation process. It is a community platform of intellectual collaboration for creation, innovation, or invention. It has been argued that crowdsourcing, a mechanism to access collective intelligence, is invaluable in the search for innovative ideas (Lykourentzou et al., 2011; Dellermann et al., 2020) . A collective intelligence framework improves our knowledge about how organisational structure, connectivity, and collaborative technologies support the generation of desired innovation outcomes (Secundo et al., 2016) . According to Elia et al. (2020) , collective intelligence is based on collaboration, coordination, and connections among participants aimed at generating, refining, and developing innovative ideas that can be transformed into successful ventures. Weng et al. (2018) found that effectively managing online co-intelligence activities enables firms to improve online collaborative innovation. Identifying and motivating participants who can contribute to emerging collective intelligence is a crucial determinant of success in community-based innovations (Mačiulienė & Skaržauskienė, 2016 (Elia et al., 2020) . Cognition-the processes of knowing, reasoning, and judgment-is a primary dimension of intelligence. According to Hardwick and Anderson (2019) , it involves the knowledge that partners bring when participating in the co-creation of innovation. Collaborative innovation requires exchanging and sharing knowledge in generating novel innovations that are not achievable by an organisation alone (Daniel et al., 2018) . Wang et al. (2018) suggest that knowledge-inspired innovation design and capture are functions of collective intelligence. Therefore, this study suggests: H4: Collective intelligence significantly impacts collaborative innovation. The development of dynamic capabilities and collective skills in the context of increasingly intense competition has been associated with both competitive performance and company survival and sustainability (Zhao & Burt, 2018; Conroy & Deller, 2020) . Survival defines sustainability, and intelligence enhances the chances of an organisation's survival (Garrido, 2009 ). Many previous studies were dedicated to investigating collective intelligence as a dynamic capability in building collective competence and increasing resilience in complex situations and rapidly changing environments (Ng & Liang, 2010; Elia et al., 2020) . According to Lo et al. (2021) , the shocking effects of COVID-19 have forced companies, as adaptive systems, to pay more attention to their need for survival and, therefore, to their resources for resilience. Explaining why, under the same COVID-19 measures, many firms experienced a substantial loss of value while others did not, Mignenan (2021) found that collective intelligence was the crucial differentiating factor. Collective intelligence establishes the ability to discover a roadmap for business sustainability (Conroy & Deller, 2020) . Elia et al. (2020) consider collective intelligence a valuable support for developing more effective and sustainable solutions and ventures. It is considered essential to sustainable value co-creation by business partners chains (Secundo et al., 2016) . In complex and dynamic environments, intelligent organisations not only guarantee survival and sustainability but also gain competitive superiority (Staškevičiūtė et al., 2006 ). An entity's ability to maintain its intelligence in changing environments depends on its ability to orient its learning to the imperative of sustainability (Gan & Zhu, 2007; Garrido, 2009; Dellermann et al., 2020) . The literature emphasises that organisational intelligence empowers enhanced responsiveness and rapid adaptation to unexpected environmental changes and increasingly optimal use of resources, which strengthens sustainability (Staškevičiūtė et al., 2006; Garrido, 2009; Li et al., 2019) . Sustainability requires a firm to be highly sensitive, to think dynamically, to respond quickly and to recreate itself, both currently and continuously. As a nonhuman adaptive living being, an organisation can be perceived as a series of activities. Its sustainability depends on its ability to reproduce itself constantly in order to remain coherent with its environment (Garrido, 2009 ). Surviving and thriving in fastchanging, complex operating environments requires high degrees of flexibility, agility, and renewal capabilities. Organisations, as complex adaptive systems, need to be intelligent enough to adapt and sustain themselves in such unpredictable environments (Ng & Liang, 2010) . Intelligent behaviour reveals an organisation's ability to operate in conditions of uncertainty through adaptation capabilities (Gan & Zhu, 2007; Pór, 2014) . Staškevičiūtė et al. (2006) argued that the ability to adjust agilely to unpredictable changing situations is a vital characteristic of intelligent organisations. Other authors have argued that collective intelligence is all about the perception of, modification of and adaptation to an environment (Gan, & Zhu, 2007; Pór, 2014; Dellermann et al., 2020) . Drawing on the above, this study hypothesises: H5: Collective intelligence significantly impacts organisational sustainability. Innovation has long been considered a creative dynamic ability to respond to has found that such a strategy assists businesses in addressing sustainability through gaining a better understanding of market needs and expectations and how to co-create value for all participants involved (Mu et al., 2019; Greco et al., 2021) . Collaborative innovation also allows firms to share innovation costs and reduce uncertainty. Such collaboration is significant in the early stages of innovation projects, where uncertainty and risk are high. It empowers firms to mitigate these risks and uncertainties (Malmström & Johansson, 2015) . Therefore this study hypothesises: H6: Collaborative innovation significantly impacts organisational sustainability. The empirical part of this study used an online questionnaire. Questionnaire items were adopted from prior related studies (Table 1 ) on social capital, collaborative innovation, collective intelligence and organisation sustainability. OS Ivanov, 2020; Greco et al., 2021; Lo et al., 2021 Three experts-in knowledge management, innovation management and organisational performance-helped to validate the survey instrument for clarity, logical consistency and relevance context. Measuring items were purified and modified based on the experts' feedback. Table 2 displays the questionnaire items. The thirty-four items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale from "strongly disagree = 1" to "strongly agree = 5". Code Measurement Items Social capital Indicate the level of agreement that your firm: SC1 Is well connected to its business partners. SC2 Obtains required resources and capabilities using its business networks. SC3 Has close relationships and collaborative activities with other firms. SC4 Has strong ties with business partners, including a high degree of trust and commitment. SC5 Acquires and leverages value-added knowledge from its business networks. SC6 Social networks influence its strategy, decisions, processes, and activities. Collaborative innovation Indicate the level of agreement that collaboration with business partners during the COVID-19 crisis has enabled your firm to: CIN1 Improve existing products, services, and/or processes. CIN2 Introduce new products, services, and/or initiatives. CIN3 Get innovative ideas and creative solutions when solving problems. CIN4 Gain new knowledge. CIN5 Adopt novel information technology solutions. Collective intelligence Attain deep collective thinking, understanding, and sharing perceptions and perspectives. CI2 Obtain a repository of information and knowledge for current and future uses. CI3 Employ collective intelligence to identify problems and evaluate ideas and alternatives about priorities and solutions. CI4 Collectively share and create new knowledge and experience. CI5 Develop and exchange best practice. CI6 Enhance continuous collective learning capability from business environments and business partners. Organisational sustainability Indicate the level of agreement that your firm was able during COVID-19 to: OS1 Improve its image and existence in society. OS2 Improve productivity. OS3 Increase profits. OS4 Sense dynamic changes posed by the epidemic and respond quickly. OS5 Adapt resources and capabilities in an agile way to meet market-changing needs during the pandemic. OS6 Support the survivability of business partners during the crisis. OS7 Maintain supply chain resilience and sustainability. Because the current study examines collaborative innovation, collective intelligence and organisations' sustainability and survival in the Covid-19 crisis, it was reasonable to select the population from firms that could continue, initiate competitive superiority and recover from this crisis. To ensure the homogeneity of the population and identify its frame, the 46 top Jordanian manufacturing firms of 2021 were selected to conduct this study. This population was derived from the international 'BestStartup.Asia' list of the best companies across Asia (https://beststartup.asia/category/western-asia/jordan/). Manufacturing firms have multidimensional and diverse relationships with many business partners, including suppliers, logistics companies, and distribution channels. This necessitates collaboration and information-sharing about market supply and demand, orders, production, inventory, and product delivery. After exploratory telephone interviews, 27 firms agreed to join this study. Table 3 presents the participant profile. In order to reach the largest possible number of respondents, printed questionnaires were distributed to firms that agreed to distribute the questionnaire by hand. A telephone survey and direct e-mail were also used, exploiting information published on the firms' websites. However, the questionnaire distribution resulted in 232 usable cases for analysis. Being quantitative, our study used SmartPLS to analyse the data, including assessing research model reliability and validity and testing hypotheses. To adjust the research instrument and purify its measurement scale, items with factor loadings < 0.70 were removed from the scale to improve model and path strength (Hair et al., 2014) . One item from each of social capital (SC5) and organisational sustainability (OS6) was excluded from the measurement scale. Internal consistency and reliability (Table 4 ) met the measurement criteria threshold. Cronbach's alpha in the measurement model assessment is > 0.80 for all constructs. Composite Reliability (CR) exceeded the threshold of 0.80. The results of the Average Variance extracted (AVE) of all constructs is also above threshold, > 0.5, confirming convergent validity. According to Fornell-Lacker's (1981) criterion, Table 5 confirms that the discriminant validity of the research model has been achieved. The analysis outcomes of the Smart PLS paths are shown in Figure 2 . These results show that social capital predicts 28.6% of the variances of collective intelligence. They also show that social capital and collective intelligence account for 51.5 % of the variances of collaborative innovation. The structural model shows that social capital, collective intelligence, and collaborative innovation predict 59.1% of the variances of organisational sustainability. Figure 2 . Path analysis Table 6 shows that social capital significantly impacts collaborative innovation (H1), collective intelligence (H2), and organisational sustainability (H3). The results show that social capital significantly impacts collaborative innovation. These findings agree with the literature (e.g., Malmström & Johansson, 2015; Jiao et al., 2019) that establishing strong ties with business partners through social interactions is a critical determinant of collaborative innovation. They are also in line with studies (e.g., Blomqvist & Levy, 2006; Steinmo & Rasmussen, 2018) , confirming that the social capital approach can explain the effects of external and internal relationships on innovation. The findings underline the significant impact of social capital on collective intelligence. They are compatible with earlier studies (e.g., Dellermann et al., 2020; Mignenan, 2021 ) that described collective intelligence as a kind of socially constructed co-creation. They also agree with studies that confirmed the function of social capital in achieving some of the features of collective intelligence such as collective memory, collective cognition, knowledge sharing and collective learning (e.g., Gan & Zhu, 2007; Ng & Liang, 2010; Secundo et al., 2016) . The findings provide evidence that social capital significantly impacts organisation sustainability. They agree with previous findings (e.g., Gligor et al., 2013; Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020 ) that social capital is a strategic organisational asset for firms seeking superior sustainable performance, sustained value creation and a sound basis for business survival and sustainability. Many authors (e.g., (Hormiga et al., 2011; Zhao & Burt, 2018; Prokop et al., 2019) have emphasised that higher levels of relational capital and the ability of firms to leverage business networks connectivity with partners are related to higher levels of success and sustainability. These findings also agree with Mubarik et al. (2021) , who show that organisations with wellintegrated social capital have been more successful in mitigating the effects of COVID-19, improving their chances of recovery and survival. The results demonstrate the impact of collective intelligence on successful collaborative innovation. They are compatible with findings (e.g., Lykourentzou et al., 2011; Mignenan, 2021) emphasising that crowdsourcing, a mechanism to achieve collective intelligence, is an excellent way of discovering innovative ideas. They also agree with Mignenan (2021) , who showed that collective intelligence leads to wiser decision-making, the co-generation of novel ideas and the co-construction of creative solutions, all of which are at the core of the collaborative innovation process. The findings also show that collective intelligence significantly impacts organisational sustainability. They accord with earlier studies (e.g., Garrido, 2009; Ng & Liang, 2010; Pór, 2014 ) that described organisations as complex adaptive systems that need to be intelligent enough to adapt and sustain themselves in unpredictable environments. Other studies (e.g., Ng & Liang, 2010; Secundo et al., 2016; Elia et al., 2020) have also regarded collective intelligence as a dynamic capability, required for building collective competence and increasing resilience in complex situations and rapidly changing environments. These results also agree with recent studies (e.g., Conroy & Deller, 2020; Elia et al. 2020 ) that found that collective intelligence is a necessary part of the roadmap to business sustainability. Finally, the results reveal that collaborative innovation significantly impacts organisational sustainability. They agree with previous studies (e.g., Akçomak & Ter Weel, 2009; Klewitz & Hansen, 2014; Bocken & Geradts, 2020 ) that emphasised the importance of innovation in the organisational competitiveness, agility, value creation and growth required for the maintenance of sustainability. They also agree with previous studies (e.g., Heil & Bornemann, 2018; Moretti & Biancardi, 2020; on the role of collaborative innovation in enhancing business performance and longstanding success, preserving its survival and sustainability. Studies of COVID-19 in particular (Ivanov, 2020; Sarkis, 2020) have emphasised the role of innovation capabilities in maintaining sustainability by facilitating fast responses and novel ways of working in the face of the challenges presented by the pandemic. Finally, the results demonstrate that collaborative innovation significantly impacts organisational sustainability. Improving current products and services, Our results will assist practitioners, particularly in employing their dynamic capabilities to maintain organisational survival and sustainability in exceptional conditions and unprecedented crises. They provide managers with an effective mechanism to respond to future crises through investing in social capital and dynamic capabilities, preserving their organisations' survival and sustainability. They will help managers generate and employ collective intelligence and collaborative innovation during unprecedented crises. Firms need to develop their social capital, collective intelligence, and collaborative innovation capabilities early, in times of prosperity and stability, to preserve their survival and sustainability in crises and difficult situations. Business partners need to collaborate and integrate their capacities for intelligence and innovation in order to address the threats and challenges of severe crises. The research model used here presents a paradigm of how to maintain firms' sustainability and continuity in an exceptionally turbulent environment. It will also help organisations increase their awareness of how to recover from the COVID-19 crisis quicker than their competitors. Although this study has offered valuable insights into the relationships among social capital, collective intelligence, collaborative innovation, and the maintenance of organisational sustainability during the COVID-19 crisis, it still has limitations. Firstly, it was confined to Jordan, meaning that the results are not generalisable to the manufacturing sectors of other countries. Future studies should be conducted in other countries and sectors, with larger sample sizes, to obtain comparative results. Secondly, this study has ignored the impact of firms' characteristics on the social capital, collective intelligence and collaborative innovation levels. Future studies should therefore consider characteristics such as ownership, size and age. Thirdly, although information technology has been fundamental to the release and development of collaborative capabilities, including collective intelligence and collaborative innovation, this study did not address this technology in detail. Therefore future studies should examine the role of information technology in empowering these capabilities and maintaining organisational sustainability. 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Resources, Conservation and Recycling An actor-network perspective on business models: How 'Being Responsible'led to incremental but pervasive change Does social capital determine innovation? To what extent? The Influence Factors of Collective Intelligence Emergence in Knowledge Communities Based on Social Network Analysis Social capital, trust, and corporate performance: how CSR helped companies during the financial crisis (and why it can keep helping them) Optimal combinations of factors influencing the sustainability of Taiwanese firms Collective intelligence systems: Classification and modeling Emergence of collective intelligence in online communities Social exchange in collaborative innovation: maker or breaker The effect of social capital and knowledge sharing to the small medium enterprise's performance and sustainability strategies Effects of sociocultural and economic factors on social entrepreneurship and sustainable development Collective Intelligence and Entrepreneurial Resilience in the Context of Covid-19 Inbound open innovation and firm performance The role of online leadership in open collaborative innovation: Evidence from blockchain open source projects Intellectual capital and supply chain resilience Educational Institution Reform: Insights from the Complexity-intelligence Strategy The institutionalization and evolutionary dynamics of interorganizational alliances and networks How social capital and knowledge affect innovation How social capital and knowledge affect innovation Knowledge management as a support for supply chain logistics planning in pandemic cases Augmenting the Collective Intelligence of the Ecosystem of Systems Communities: ntroduction to the Design of the The survival of academic spinoff companies: An empirical study of key determinants Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy Exploring the relationship between social capital, innovation capability and innovation during the coronavirus pandemic Impact of Social Capital on Small Firms Performance in West Bengal Supply chain sustainability: learning from the COVID-19 pandemic Increasing collective intelligence within organizations based on trust and reputation models Managing intellectual capital through a collective intelligence approach: An integrated framework for universities Cocreating rigorous and relevant knowledge Collaborative innovation in supply chain systems: Value creation and leadership structure Collaborative innovation in supply chain systems: Value creation and leadership structure Cognitive barriers to collaborative innovation generation in supply chain relationships. Industrial Marketing Management Do creativity and intellectual capital matter for SMEs sustainability? The role of competitive advantage Social capital of entrepreneurs and small firm performance: A meta-analysis of contextual and methodological moderators Weaving an integrated web: Multilevel and multisystem perspectives of ecologically sustainable organizations Applying the Principles of The interplay of cognitive and relational social capital dimensions in university-industry collaboration: Overcoming the experience barrier The role of dyadic social capital in enhancing collaborative knowledge creation Leadership styles, absorptive capacity and firm's innovation Collaborative innovation capability in IT-enabled inter-firm collaboration An integrated open approach to capturing systematic knowledge for manufacturing process innovation based on collective intelligence Marketing innovations during a global crisis: A study of China firms' response to CO D-19 A factor-identifying study of the user-perceived value of collective intelligence based on online social networks Exploring the relationship between social capital, innovation capability and innovation. Innovation A note on business survival and social network