Introduction

Many academic libraries are emphasising building relationships with their campus and communities. While this goal is achieved using a variety of strategies, many libraries use liaison staffing models designed to build relationships with assigned groups on campus (Jaguszewski & Williams 2013). Despite the prevalence of relational and externally facing staffing models, the intersection of liaison relationships and staff turnover has not yet been explored. As libraries consider, implement and modify staffing models and liaison responsibilities, developing a framework for understanding the organisational risks and benefits of relationship-based liaison roles is pertinent. (The term liaison will be used as shorthand to encompass all library staff roles with an emphasis on building relationships with stakeholders. This could include subject and functional specialists, librarians and all other library staff.)

Social capital theory can be used as a theoretical framework to examine the effect of liaison turnover on academic libraries. Liaison work has already been explored within the context of social capital theory and relational assets. The emphasis has been on how it informs liaison outreach efforts (Ramsey 2016; Schlak 2016) and suggestions to incorporate relational assets into assessment practices (Bracke 2016). While social capital theory has been used frequently in management and marketing research on boundary-spanning employees and what happens when those employees move into other roles (Bendapudi & Leone 2002; Park & Shaw 2013), it has not been applied to turnover in library liaison roles.

This chapter will begin with an overview of social capital theory (emphasising relational assets) in academic librarianship, management and marketing research. It will then discuss social capital-oriented turnover research focused on boundary-spanning employees in these three fields. The findings of these various areas of research will be synthesised to inform the ways academic libraries can think about, design and implement their liaison programs from a new perspective.

Social capital theory

While definitions of social capital vary, one often used is ‘The sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit’ (Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998, p. 243). In this definition, social capital has three separate but interrelated dimensions: structural, relational and cognitive, with relational assets being those ‘created and leveraged through relationships’ (Nahapiet & Ghoshal 1998, p. 244).