[Social capital 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, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998)*
[Social capital] enables us to create value, get things done, achieve our goals, fulfill our missions in life, and make our contributions to the world…No one can be successful—or even survive—without it.
Wayne E. Baker, University of Michigan Ross School of Business
Capital is an asset. It’s a resource that can be used to generate, produce, create, and transform. Problematically, capital has historically been thought of solely as a financial asset. With the rise of Integrated Reporting, Expanded Value Added Statements, and ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Reporting, highly influential and successful organizations instill confidence in the idea that value is a much more complex and dynamic concept.
Social Capital is unique in that it is not finite, exhaustible, or dependent on tangible stewardship. There are no accountants for social capital and using the resources it provides does not necessarily attenuate their availability or expansiveness. Social capital is built on relationships and predicated on good communication.
In the realm of Social Capital, this is a common notion among statesmen, politicians, administrators, generals, revolutionaries and anyone (everyone) integrated into a social network where benefits and resources are derived from the richness of those bonding and bridging connections.
Bonding
“Bonding social capital binds together people of the same race, class, and political sentiment — those ‘who are alike’ (Stolle et al., 2008, p. 60).”*
Bonding social capital are the strong ties between families, fraternal groups, and voluntary organizations. They reinforce our identity, but don’t provide a wide breadth of resources.
Bridging
Bridging social capital is the force of weak ties; the diverse social connections across communities that provides unique, rare resources which may not be available in more tight-knit social networks.
“A movement starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between close acquaintances. It grows because of the habits of a community, and the weak ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together. And it endures because a movement’s leaders give participants new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership.”*
Linking
Similar to bridging social capital insofar as these ties are not tight-knit, linking social capital refers to connections within and dictated by a heirarchy.
This type of social capital is unique in that is describes a power dynamic where individuals have unequal levels of power, wheras bridging and bonding refer to a network of peers, relationships, and individuals at a horizontal level.
Things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other, and social capital is equal to financial, human, intellectual, natural, and manufactured capital insofar as it generates value for an organization.
Components of Social Capital
Structural
The Network – who and how people are connected
- network ties
- arrangement of the network (density, connectivity, heirarchy)
- the capacity to leverage social capital (the transferability of social capital to different contexts)
Cognitive
The Mental Models
- shared interpretations, representations, and systems of meaning
- shapes the absorption and processing of information and
- the creation of knowledge
- Evident through
- shared languages
- codes
- narratives
Relational
The Relationships
- the characteristics and content of relationships
- trust
- norms
- obligations
- expectations
- identity
- identification
Plugged into the network of communications and computers, they seem to enjoy omniscience and omnipotence; severed from their network, they turn out to be insubstantial and disoriented. they no longer command the world as persons in their own right. Their conversation is without depth and wit; their attention is roving and vacuous; their sense of place is uncertain and fickle (Borgmann, 1992: 108)
Andrew Feenberg – Questioning Technology
The Dangers of Disregarding Communication Predicated on Social Capital
Ignoring the power of Social Capital can have disastrous consequences. Time and again this has been proven across diverse fields and industries. These three examples demonstrate how social capital can be squashed by ego, leveraged for fraud, or discounted to the toll of billions of dollars, lost astronauts, and broken families.
Surgeons confident in their skills and memory ignore nurses, procedures, and safeguards.
Vividly depicted in Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, Rhode Island Hospital – though hailed as one of the best teaching hospitals and ICUs in the country – was fraught with interpersonal strife and heirarchical tensions.
An abundance of self-conceit from medical doctors prevented other practitioners – nurses, NPs, technicians – from adequately performing necessary processes and procedures.
This culture lead to patients undergoing unneeded or even completely erroneous surgeries, resulting in injury and deaths.
Media billionaires, national organizations, two former Secretaries of State, two fomer Secretaries of Defense, and a former director of the CDC lent their notoriety and renown to empty promises from a promising tech prodigy turned fraudster.
Initially lauded as revolutionary technology packed with promise, the endeavour of Elizabeth Holmes turned out to be nothing more than a sham — a cleverly concealed pretense of pioneering medical innovation.
Holmes claimed to have created cutting-edge technology that could perform blood tests with miniscule amounts of material.
The support she garnered afforded more than $500 million in investments and a $9 billion valuation.
Low-level engineers sounding warnings of severe design flaws were flippantly turned into vague alarmists concerned about technical problems. (Trevino et. al., 1987; Lengel & Daft, 1988)
Despite foreknowledge of the design flaws in Solid Rocket Booster’s (SRB) O-rings, there was immense pressure for NASA to move forward with the launch. Furthermore, the danger of the O-rings in cold weather was intentionally deemphasized.
In a memo from a Morton Thiokol engineer: “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem, with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.”
“However, I was given strict instructions, which came from NASA, not to express the critical urgency of fixing the joint but only to emphasize the joint improvement aspect during my presentation.”*
“Like
(Coleman, 1990: 302).*
other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making
possible the achievement of certain ends that would not be
attainable in its absence”
The findings from Walther and Bazarova (2008)* provide empirical evidence that media choice directly affects communication satisfaction through perceived propinquity, especially within mixed-media environments. Since communication satisfaction is a core antecedent of trust, relationship strength, and cooperation, the research supports the theoretical claim that media environments ultimately shape social capital within organizations.
Research
- Anonymous. . Being Asked to Soften the Urgency of the O-ring Problem. Online Ethics Center. DOI:https://doi.org/10.18130/jh52-1429. https://onlineethics.org/cases/being-asked-soften-urgency-o-ring-problem.
- Bouchillon, B.C. (2014). Social Tie and generalized trust, online and inperson: Contact or Conflict – The mediating role of bonding social capital in America. Social Science Computer Review, 32(4), 506-523
- Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House.
- Feenberg, A. (1999). Questioning technology. Routledge.
- Nahapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage. The Academy of Management Review, 23(2), 242–266.
- Whiteley, P.F. (2015). Social Capital. In J.D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (2nd ed., Vol 22, pp. 174-180)