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Social capital is increasingly regarded by politicians, policy makers and theoreticians as an antidote to a range of social ills and its absence as a cause of those same ills. Originating in Bourdieu and popularised by Putnam, much is claimed for social capital. However, there is little agreement on what social capital is, where it comes from, how it can be measured and, if it is a 'good thing', how we can get more of it. This article reviews the main schools of thought relating to social capital, summarises what is being claimed for it and then sketches out a research agenda to address the unresolved issues surrounding this attractive but elusive concept.

PurposeThe paper seeks to use the concept of net social capital to help explain the behaviour of a business constellation, a group of entrepreneurial firms in different businesses that cooperate to their mutual benefit.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes the form of an in‐depth case study of the Canadian Groupement Quebecoise.FindingsThe members of the group create and maintain net social capital among themselves in a variety of ways both social and economic and in turn use that net social capital outside the group in dealings with other organisations, profit and non‐profit.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest ways in which firms can work with other non‐competing firms.Originality/valueThe concept of net social capital is novel and the study is the first of its kind that investigates such a tightly knit and productive business constellation.

'Der Begriff 'Sozialkapital' bezieht sich auf Formen gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts, die politischen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Nutzen bringen. Unter dem Eindruck, dass sich traditionelle Normen, Vertrauensverhältnisse und Bindungen auflösen und in Zukunft neue soziale Bindungen Bedeutung gewinnen werden, hat die OECD das Programm 'Measuring Social Capital' organisiert: bis 2004 sollen statistische Indikatoren und Survey-Fragen für vergleichende Studien entwickelt werden. Nach einem Überblick über den Begriff Sozialkapital fasst dieser Tagungsbericht Diskussionen und vier Fallbeispiele von Forschungsergebnissen zusammen, die auf einer Konferenz im Mai 2003 vorgelegt wurden: über die Wirkung von Sozialkapital auf Gesundheit und Mortalität, auf Bildungserfolg, sowie auf Wohlbefinden und Arbeitszufriedenheit. Ferner erfolgt ein Überblick über die Begriffs- und Methodendiskussion, die zu einer begrifflichen Differenzierung von 'innerer' Gruppenbindung ('bonding') und Kooperation bzw. Konfliktregelung zwischen Gruppen ('bridging') führte sowie unterschiedliche Ebenen sozialer Nähe und Gruppengröße herausarbeitete.' (Autorenreferat)

'Der Begriff 'Sozialkapital' wird in verschiedener, oft unscharfer Bedeutung verwendet. Zunächst wird der Inhalt des Begriffs Sozialkapital im Unterschied zum Sachkapital und zum Humankapital dargestellt. In der Literatur wird Sozialkapital in hohem Maß mit generellem Vertrauen und auf Gegenseitigkeit beruhender Bereitschaft zu gemeinwohlorientiertem Verhalten identifiziert. Sozialpartnerschaft kann als spezifische Form dieses Vertrauensverhältnisses zwischen sozialen Gruppen gesehen werden, das eine friedliche Regulierung von Interessengegensätzen ermöglicht. Die so genannte 'Neue lnstitutionenökonomie' bietet einen dem Konzept des Sozialkapitals verwandten Ansatz zur näheren Analyse der Arbeitsbeziehungen als 'relationale Kontrakte', ebenso Olsons Theorie des kollektiven Handelns, v. a. sein Begriff der 'umfassenden Organisation'. Damit kann erklärt werden, in welchen Formen Sozialkapital die wirtschaftliche Performance verbessern kann. Es bleibt allerdings fraglich, ob die Bezeichnung von institutionellen Arrangements als 'soziales Kapital' tatsächlich ein besseres Verständnis dieser Zusammenhänge ermöglicht.' (Autorenreferat)

AbstractIn recent decades economists started discovering the importance of the social dimension of economic interactions. Contemporary economics has borrowed several sociological concepts for its own use, among the most important being the concept of social capital. However, this transfer within disciplines did not occur without a loss—the nature of social capital in economics remains confused and obscure. The purpose of this article is to clarify it, specify the possibilities for its use, and discuss their limits. It is argued that economics once also possessed a view of human beings that was more "socialized" than the modern neoclassical Homo oeconomicus, and that this more "socialized" view still exists in the Austrian school of economics. Because this tradition of economic thought has also developed an elaborate capital theory, it can serve as an ideal source where we can look for inspiration in the current social capital debate. First, social capital is (re)defined along these lines as an individual's asset connected with recognized reciprocity (as opposed to interactions usually classified as "altruistic"). Then major critical claims about the relation between social and physical capital are answered and the connection between social capital, trust, and social norms is described.

In this paper we propose a social capital measure for individuals belonging to a social network. To do this, we use a game theoretical approach and so we suppose that these individuals are also involved in a cooperative TU-game modelling the economic or social interests that motivate their interactions. We propose as a measure of individual social capital the difference between the Myerson and the Shapley values of actors in the social network and explore the properties of such a measure. This definition is close to our previous measure of centrality (Gómez et al., 2003) and so in this paper we also study the relation between social capital and centrality, finding that this social capital measure can be considered as a vector magnitude with two additive components: centrality and positional externalities. Finally, several real political examples are used to show the agreement of our conclusions with the reality in these situations.

Social capital and sport organisations: An introduction -- Social capital and sport: A 20 year overview -- Social capital: A mechanism based conceptualisation -- The case studies: An introduction -- Forming and maintaining social ties in voluntary sports clubs -- The core social capital mechanisms in voluntary sports clubs -- The outcomes of social capital in voluntary sports clubs -- How context shapes social capital in voluntary sports clubs: Personal context and club culture -- How context shapes social capital in voluntary sports clubs: Key elements of club context -- Social capital in voluntary sports clubs: International evidence -- Beyond voluntary sports clubs: Social capital in the wider sport management, policy and sociology literature -- Social capital and sport organisations: Implications and recommendations for practitioners and policymakers -- Social capital and sport organisations: A conclusion.

AbstractThe idea of social capital has had a powerful impact on the study of politics, policy, and social science at large. Much of what we know about the causes and effects of social capital, however, is limited by the nature of data used regularly by scholars working in this area. Current data sets allow researchers to study changes in social capital over time at the national level and static differences in the distribution of social capital across the states. The inability of scholars to know how social capital varies over time and across space limits the kinds of questions that can be asked. In this article, we use sample data of more than 20,000 individuals conducted biannually in the continuous 48 states by the marketing research firm MediaMark Research, Inc. to create a unique measure of social capital that varies across time and space. These data are available at the state level from 1986 through 2004.