Social Capital: Critical Perspectives
by Stephen Baron (Editor), John Field (Editor), Tom Schuller (Editor)
Social capital - broadly, social networks, the reciprocities that arise from them, and the value of these for achieving mutual goals-has become an influential concept in debating and understanding the modern world.

Achieving Success Through Social Capital: Tapping Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks
Wayne E. Baker, Wayne E. Baker
A Book in the University of Michigan Business School Series You can build it. You can use it. You'll prosper if you do. Discover a step-by-step program for tapping the hidden resources in your business, professional, and personal networks: your social capital. Here, an expert on building connections shows how building rich social capital produces higher pay, faster promotions, better jobs, breakthrough ideas, new business opportunities, and profitable companies.You'll learn how to develop your own social capital and use it to attain your personal and professional goals and, in the process, enhance your own health and emotional well-being.
Book Info
(Wiley) Guides the reader through the process of evaluating, building, and using social capital, the resources available and through personal and business networks. The reader can discover why social capital is so important and how to make it work for a business. DLC: Business networks.
Why do some people prosper while others struggle? The difference is more than what they know. It's also who they know. Successful people know how to improve their wealth, health, and happiness by creating rich social capital, tapping the hidden resources in their business, professional, and personal networks.
Achieving Success Through Social Capital is your hands-on guide to success through building and using your social capital. You'll learn why rich social capital produces higher pay, faster promotions, better jobs, breakthrough ideas, new business opportunities, and profitable companies. Rich social capital can even make you luckier. You'll also learn why good networks are essential for your health and emotional well-being, and for a meaningful life even a longer life.
With his 1994 business bestseller Networking Smart, Wayne Baker established himself as a leader in the social capital field. In this new book, he incorporates the latest findings about social capital into an empowering, practical, step-by-step program. He shows you how to move beyond the myth of individualism to the recognition that we are all connected and that connections are the keys to success. He guides you through the process of evaluating the quality of your current networks, improving your networks by applying dozens of proven practices, and using your social capital to invoke the power of reciprocity, helping yourself by contributing to others.
Baker has helped thousands of people, companies, and associations discover the power of social capital, take charge of their networks, and create the vibrant networks they need to support their missions and achieve their goals. His books, workshops, and business courses enable people to learn, apply, and benefit from the universal principles of networks.
Whether you're an entrepreneur with a growing business, a corporate executive trying to manage change, or a free agent in transitiondiscover the power of social capital. Learn to value connections, reinvent your networks, and create blockbuster results. This book will show you how.

Social Capital : A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)
Nan Lin, Mark Granovetter
"Lin succeeds in clarifying a muddled body of work on social capital ... [this book] makes its own unique contribution by exploring diverse issues related to the social capital idea." International Journal of Social Welfare "Social Capital is a magisterial analysis of how social networks are a key to individual achievement and social inclusion. Nan Lin shows that those who depend only on market transactions ignore at their peril the social relationships that underlie and shape deals. Those who read this book will increase their human capital by learning how to increase their social capital." Barry Wellman, University of Toronto "This long-needed and richly detailed volume, by one of the original theorists of social capital, organizes and advances on the key intellectual challenges and accomplishments of the field of structural sociology. Immensely readable and relevant to today's most interesting sociological questions regarding economic life, Lin's book succeeds in bursting open new doors to the theoretically and substantively important consequences of social capital." Brian Uzzi, Northwestern University "In Social Capital Nan Lin takes on the long overdue task of meshing incoming network theory with social stratification and mobility theory - in both cases with guidance from empirical research. Aptly, Lin demonstrates the 'strength of weak models': by avoiding technical specifications he not only makes the book accessible to the non-numerate but also suggests how his themes can bear on different disciplinary interests and venues." Harrison White, Columbia University "Social Capital integrates Nan Lin's two decades of work on social resources and instrumental action. It carefully distinguishes the capital residing in social networks from economic, human, and cultural capital. Drawing on his original research in both the United States and East Asia, Lin presents compelling empirical evidence showing provocative theoretical extensions about the role of social capital in the formation of both networks and reputations, and argues that developments in information techmology have led to a dramatic rise in the formation of social capital." Peter V. Marsden, Harvard University
Social Capital explains the importance of using social connections and social relations in achieving goals. Social capital, or resources accessed through such connections and relations, is critical (along with human capital, or what a person or organization actually possesses) in achieving goals for individuals, social groups, organizations, and communities. The book introduces a theory that forcefully argues and shows why "it is who you know," as well as "what you know" that makes a difference in life and society.

Knowledge and Social Capital: Foundations and Applications (Knowledge Reader) by Eric Lesser
Social capital - the informal networks, trust and common understanding among individuals in an organization - determines major competitive advantages in today's networked economy. Knowledge and Social Capital explains how social capital can drive collaboration, reconcile an organization's internal and external labor markets, and improve organizational effectiveness. This edited compilation of authoritative articles helps readers understand how they can build and capitalize on their own organizations' social capital.
Knowledge and Social Capital teaches core principles and important strategies to a range of executives, including organizational development specialists, corporate strategists, and knowledge management professionals. Readers will learn how an organization can:
Leverage its social capital to effectively develop and manage knowledge
Foster concrete, trusting and productive personal relationships among its members
Use social capital to improve the effectiveness of joint ventures and alliances
Explains how social capital can drive collaboration, reconcile an organization;s internal and external labor markets, and improve organizational effectiveness. Teaches core principles and important strategies to a range of executives. Softcover.

Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society by Robert D. Putnam (Editor)
In his national bestseller Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam illuminated the decline of social capital in the US, revealing how over the last quarter century we have tended to join fewer clubs, know our neighbors less, meet less frequently with friends, and even socialize less often with our families. Now, in Democracies in Flux, Putnam brings together a group of leading scholars who broaden his findings as they examine the state of social capital in eight advanced democracies around the world. The book is packed with many intriguing revelations. The contributors note, for instance, that waning participation in unions, churches, and political parties seems to be virtually universal, a troubling discovery as these forms of social capital are especially important for empowering less educated, less affluent portions of the population. Indeed, in general, the researchers found more social grouping among the affluent than among the working classes and they find evidence of a younger generation that is singularly uninterested in politics, distrustful both of politicians and of others, cynical about public affairs, and less inclined to participate in enduring social organizations. On the bright side, social capital appears as strong as ever in Sweden, where 40% of the adult population participate in "study circles"--small groups who meet weekly for educational discussions. Social capital--good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse--is vitally important both for the health of our communities and for our own physical and psychological well being. Offering a panoramic look at social capital around the world, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of these phenomena. It will interest anyone concerned with promoting civil society and vibrant social discourse.

Social Capital and Information Technology (June 18, 2004)
by Marleen Huysman (Editor), Volker Wulf (Editor)
The concept of social capital, or the value that can be derived from social ties created by goodwill, mutual support, shared language, common beliefs, and a sense of mutual obligation, has been applied to a number of fields, from sociology to management. It is only lately, however, that researchers in information technology and knowledge management have begun to explore the idea of social capital in relation to their fields. This collection of thirteen essays by computer scientists, sociologists, communication specialists, economists, and others presents a multidisciplinary look at this particular intersection of information technology and social science and the need to adopt a sociotechnical perspective.
For the most part the contributors take a positive view of the interplay of social capital, knowledge sharing, and community building. Some essays look at specific instances, including the on-line and face-to-face relationships of a community of athletes, the building of social capital among Iranian NGOs, and the Internet-based communities created by the open-source movement, while others discuss more general ideas of civic and personal communities. The last four essays examine computer applications that augment social capital, including topic- and member-centered communications spaces such as the Expert Finder and the Loops system and virtual repositories of knowledge such as the Answer Garden and Pearls of Wisdom.
Marleen Huysman is Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems, Marketing and Logistics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vrije Unversiteit Amsterdam. Volker Wulf is Associate Professor at the University of Siegen, Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, and Head of the International Institute for Socio-Informatics, Bonn.

Social Capital Versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millenium (Contemporary Political Economy)
by Ben Fine
Ben Fine traces the origins of social capital through the work of Becker, Bourdieu and Coleman and comprehensively reviews the literature across the social sciences. The text is uniquely critical of social capital, explaining how it avoids a proper confrontation with political economy and has become chaotic. This highly topical text addresses some major themes, including the shifting relationship between economics and other social sciences, the 'publish or perish' concept currently burdening scholarly integrity, and how a social science interdisciplinarity requires a place for political economy together with cultural and social theory.
(Taylor and Francis) Traces the beginnings of the idea of social capital all the way to its present usage and meaning today. A unique critique of the idea that has become such a popular explanation for a variety of social and political problems. DLC: Social sciences--Philosophy. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

Creation and Returns of Social Capital: A New Research Program
(Routledge Advances in Sociology, 9) (November 1, 2003) Henk Flap (Editor), Beate Volker (Editor)
The idea of a social capital research program has become increasingly significant within the social sciences. This collection of essays considers integration and standardization of measurement instruments and research on social capital.

Social Capital and Democratic Transition (Routledge Studies of Societies in Transition) (February, 03)
by Gabriel Badescu (Editor), Eric M. Uslaner (Editor), Eric Uslaner
The concept of social capital has been used by political scientists to explain both the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe and the decline of social cohesion in Western societies. This edited collection presents the latest quantitative research on how post-communist countries are adapting to Western models of society. The book combines theoretical and institutional analysis with detailed case studies looking at Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania and the former East Germany.

Social Capital (February 28, 2005)
by David Halpern
Social capital has become a buzzword among political and academic elites, though the term remains relatively unfamiliar to the general public

Social Capital And Entrepreneurship (May 31, 2005)
by Philip H. Kim, Howard E. Aldrich

Social Capital and Lifelong Learning (June 1, 2005) by John Field

Conflict, Social Capital And Managing Natural Resources: A West African Case Study (May 30, 2005) Keith M. Moore (Editor)
This book is the product of a six-year project from the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP) which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). It assesses how conflicting claims to scarce natural resources (land, farmer's rights) can be resolved in the agricultural and pastoral systems or arid and semi-arid regions of West Africa. Based on research in Mali, this book describes the approach, components and outcomes of the project and describes hwo the model can be applied elsewhere to improve resource management and community initiatives. The book will be of significant interest to those working in the areas of rural sociology and development and agricultural, development and natural resource economics.

Religion As Social Capital: Producing the Common Good (April 1, 2003) by Corwin E. Smidt (Editor)

In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work
Don Cohen, Laurence Prusak
Work as Social Process, August 3, 02
Reviewer: Suckwoo Lee "cura_lee" (Seoul, Seoul South Korea)
Why do new CEOs staff the company with their men?
Why are women under-represented un the business world?
Why could some succeed in launching and establishing new enterprises while other couldn't manage do so?
Why are the MBA degree craved, while there is no link between MBA results and future salary?
Social capital is supposed to be the answer to these questions. Social capital is widely exploited to emphasize the social nature of work: the work is the social process. Previously, corporate culture is used to point out such a nature. Organization's culture means the set of rites and rituals that give it its unique character. Culture is the "way things are done around here." The HP way, for example, the open-plan, walkabout management style laid down in the 1950s, by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, a style that still imbues the company today. But culture is a elusive concept. It's too soft to be managed. One executive asserted that "the only culture round here is in the yoghurts in the canteen." Nevertheless, though too soft to grasp, it's very real one. So many M&As have been botched for clashes between corporate cultures. It's real but too elusive to manage and grasp. Social capital is introduced to ground it on tangible material base. Then what is social capital? Social capital refers attributes like trust, commitment, attachment and so forth which belongs to active connections among people, in other word, network and community.
When the God decided to put a stop to human-being's first great collective enterprise, he confused their language so they could no longer understand one another, and could not carry out the joint project, Tower of Babel. Carry a heavy stone could be done without words. The real problem was the loss of understanding that cannot be mimed or diagrammed. Without common speech, the tower's planners could not have inspired others to join the project, workers could not have learned to trust each other's judgment, resolve unexpected problems together, or count on each other's help in dangerous situations. In other words, what they lost was not just common language, but the social capital which was probably more critical than the failure of information exchange.
Some schools in economics of organization characterized the firm as the flow of information. It's hard to deny. In this regard, however, corporate culture is no more than each company's idiosyncratic frame to each processing info: the firm is no more than a cybernetic system. But the firm is a social process built on community and network. Culture is what resides in community and network within personnel.
Moreover, organization's knowledge and capabilities lies not in official hierarchy but in unofficial community of practice. Most job training occurs after workers join a firm. They learn by dong on the shop floor. There is always a manual that describes how to operate a particular machine or conduct a job. As times passes, however, workers are apt to devise better ways to do the job and surpass the manual. And this is the collective process. As they work together, knowledge slowly moves from person to person. Network and community are not only the repository of corporate knowledge and capacities, but also the incubator of collaboration, especially voluntary collaboration that does not rely on external incentives. They help create and sustain our personal identities, the intrinsic satisfactions of praise, respect, and gratitude from fellow members. Those have more meaning and power than little prizes or even monetary rewards.
Now, I think, you've got what is social capital. Above, I followed the style of the book which does not burden the reader with abstract concepts, but illustrate the picture of social capital with real world examples, to enlighten readers to the practical meaning of social capital in their own workplace. With closing the last page. I bet you get the crux and import of social capital.

Players in the Public Policy Process : Nonprofits as Social Capital and Agents (April 2, 2005)
by Herrington J. Bryce
Theodore R. Marmor, Professor of Public Managment and Political Science, Yale University
"Serious students of public policy ought not to ignore this theoretically sophisticated and empirically informed work."
Theodore R. Marmor, Professor of Public Management and Political Science, Yale University
Serious students of public policy ought not to ignore this theoretically sophisticated and empirically informed work.
Julian Wolpert, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Geography, Public Affairs, and Urban Planning; Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Insightful, innovative, and well-grounded; strongly recommended
Steven Kelman, Weatherhead Professor of Public Management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
This book helps us to understand the opportunities and the risks nonprofits may face as agents of public purpose.
Clarence Stone, Author of Regime Politics, Professor Emeritus, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Timely, fresh, and innately significant
This book systematically develops the perspective of nonprofits or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as social capital assets and agents of public policy within the principal-agent paradigm and across public purposes--foreign or domestic, religious or sectarian, in developed or developing countries. The perspective has universal applicability and allows us to go beyond assumptions of market or government failure. Moreover, the perspective reflects the competitive situation in which nonprofits frequently find themselves when bidding against firms for government contracts. The analysis identifies five factors that could offer nonprofits a clear, competitive advantage over firms and governments in certain contract bidding. The perspective yields a set of implications for the strategic positioning of nonprofits in the public policy arena, and yields a new functional classification that includes nonprofits (not merely as service providers), but as managers of significant social risks, as market and transaction regulators, and as centers of collective action along the full spectrum of public policy processes and issues. Nonprofits influence our electoral choices of politicians (policymakers) and through the latter, nonprofits influence the appointments of those who design, plan, and administer policy within the public bureaucracy. Inside and outside the bureaucracy nonprofits influence policy choices, the protocols, the practices, and the success or failure of policy implementation. The central contribution of this book is the articulation of a perspective of how nonprofits play these varied roles as social capital assets and agents for the public’s purposes and the subsequent theoretical, practical and managerial implications of this functional view.

Generating Social Capital: Civil Society and Institutions in Comparative Perspective May 16, 03
by Dietlind Stolle, Marc Hooghe
"The diverse essays in this edited volume focus sharply on the important question: where does social capital come from? Using different analytical approaches to data culled from a variety of countries across three continents, the book advances our understanding of the nature and origins of social capital."--Ken Newton, University of Southampton
"Generating Social Capital is an excellent collection of original, thematically related essays and empirical reports. The great strengths of the book rest in its comparative perspective and in its challenges to and reinterpretations of the conventional literature." --M. Kent Jennings, Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara
"This nicely integrated volume significantly contributes to our understanding of the construction, destruction, and forms of social capital. Its focus on the institutions and contexts that produce trust lays the groundwork for both better public policy and better social science."
--Margaret Levi, Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies, University of Washington

Social Capital (Key Ideas) (Paperback) (July, 2003) by John Field
The term 'social capital' is a way of conceptualizing the intangible resources of community, shared values and trust upon which we draw in daily life. It has achieved considerable currency in the social sciences and has been taken up within politics and sociology as a means of explaining the decline of social cohesion and community values in many western societies. This is an indispensable introduction to the topic which explains the theoretical underpinning of the subject, the empirical work that has been done to explore its operation and the effect that it has had on policy making.

Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998 (Studies in Government and Public Policy) by Marion Orr
Deindustrialization, white flight, and inner city poverty have spelled trouble for Baltimore schools. Marion Orr now examines why school reform has been difficult to achieve there, revealing the struggles of civic leaders and the limitations placed on Baltimore's African-American community as each has tried to rescue a failing school system.
Examining the interplay between government and society, Orr presents the first systematic analysis of social capital both within the African-American community ("black social capital") and outside it where social capital crosses racial lines. Orr shows that while black social capital may have created solidarity against white domination in Baltimore, it hampered African-American leaders' capacity to enlist the cooperation from white corporate elites and suburban residents needed for school reform.
Orr examines social capital at the neighborhood level, in elite-level interactions, and in intergovernmental relations to argue that black social capital doesn't necessarily translate into the kind of intergroup coalition needed to bring about school reform. He also includes an extensive historical survey of the black community, showing how distrust engendered by past black experiences has hampered the formation of significant intergroup social capital.
The book features case studies of school reform activity, including the first analysis of the politics surrounding Baltimore's decision to hire a private, for-profit firm to operate nine of its public schools. These cases illuminate the paradoxical aspects of black social capital in citywide school reform while offering critical perspectives on current debates about privatization, site-based management, and other reform alternatives.
Orr's book challenges those who argue that social capital alone can solve fundamentally political problems by purely social means and questions the efficacy of either privatization or black community power to reform urban schools. Black Social Capital offers a cogent conceptual synthesis of social capital theory and urban regime theory that demonstrates the importance of government, politics, and leadership in converting social capital into a resource that can be mobilized for effective social change.
This book is part of the Studies in Government and Public Policy series.
"A significant contribution to the growing literature on the politics of urban education. School reform advocates who embrace privatization as a panacea or who think social capital by itself should cure what ails our urban public schools will think twice after they read this important book."--Richard DeLeon, author of Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975-1991
"An impressive and important piece of work that should be adopted not only in political science and urban politics but also in history, sociology, and education courses." --Dianne Pinderhughes, author of Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics

Social Capital and Poor Communities (Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building) by Susan Saegert (Editor), J. Phillip Thompson (Editor), Mark R. Warren (Editor)

Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective
by Ismail Serageldin, Partha Dasupta
In this collection of essays, contributors debate the definition of social capital—-broadly understood as the effect social networks and shared attitudes can have on economic performance—and ask how the concept can be applied to development policy and analysis.
How do social capital theories help broaden our thinking about development--and how does this hard-to-quantify concept make analyzing development efforts more difficult? What impact do informal social networks have on the state and other formal organizations? What role does trust play within large organizations? These are some of the questions that the contributors debate. They also suggest methods for measuring social capital and offer examples from China, the Czech Republic, India, Italy, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Tanzania, and Ukraine.
The volume is edited by Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin. Contributors include James Coleman—whose essay helped establish social capital as an organizing concept in the social sciences—as well as Robert Putnam, Robert M. Solow, and Joseph E. Stiglitz. This book will be of interest to anyone seeking a better understanding of social capital and its impact on development efforts.

The Creation And Destruction Of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-Operative Movements and Institutions (August 30, 2004)
by Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen, Gert Tinggaard Svendsen
Is social capital the ‘missing link’ in economics? In this vital new book, the authors argue that the ‘forgotten’ production factor of social capital is as crucial in economic decision-making as the other more traditional factors of production such as physical, financial and human capital. They attempt to bridge the gap between theory and reality by examining the main factors that determine entrepreneurship, co-operative movements and the creation and destruction of social capital.
To address the question of how social capital is created and destroyed, the authors develop an interdisciplinary approach combining political science, economics, anthropology, sociology and history. They show how bridging social capital enforces personal contact and acts as a lubricator for human co-operation, whereas bonding social capital enforces distance between people, increasing mistrust and, consequently, transaction costs. They demonstrate how entrepreneurship can facilitate voluntary collective action and create inclusive forms of social capital. Crucial in this respect is that entrepreneurs are motivated not only by economic incentives but also by social motives. Applying historical and contemporary case studies, they identify the serious human and economic consequences that result when social capital is disregarded. The authors believe that the implications of such a discovery demand a re-evaluation of traditional economic theory.
This book will contribute substantially to academic and popular debates on social capital and will be an invaluable source of reference for all social scientists. It will particularly appeal to students and scholars of public policy, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology and history.