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SOCIAL CAPITAL: BENEFITS OF HUMAN SOCIABILITY

We provide training, research and reporting, facilitation and presentation services in relation to social capital, particularly for organisations

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AN INTRIGUING INTEGRATION OF SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS

Social capital is fundamentally about how people interact with each other, how they work together, share, help, and collaborate. 

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SOCIAL CAPITAL & ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

The core of our business is working with organisations that would like to improve their social capital and organisational culture.

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Latest Articles

The difference between social capital and cultural capital

July 23, 2022

Social Capital in the Digital Age Vocational Education and Training (VET) System in Georgia

April 23, 2022

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Why is social capital important?

How isn’t it? Social capital is entwined in so much of our lives without us being aware of it. However, the more we are aware of it’s importance, the more we are likely to see it’s benefits. 

Working together

Without social capital humans could not work together. This is because social capital is the shared values, norms, trust, and belonging that make social exchange possible.

Better leadership

An understanding of social capital improves leadership capabilities. It can support the improvement of organizational culture because it considers factors often overlooked.

It's capital

A lot of attention is paid to financial capital, human capital, natural capital etc. All forms of capital have benefits to an organization but some are often not given their due attention. Ignoring social capital can exacerbate issues within your organization.

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Growing research suggests that areas with higher concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities have experienced more negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this webinar, I will consider the mediating role of social capital in the effect of minority racial concentration on COVID-19 infection. I separate between two major dimensions of social capital, namely, cohesion social capital and network social capital, and consider how they might mediate the association differently. On one hand, network social capital in the forms of network connections and participation in social activities often promote more human to human contacts that could lead to the spread of the virus. On the other hand, cohesion social capital in the forms of social trust and political confidence can endow individuals with greater concern for others and high compliance with control measures that could help reduce the potential spread. In the first study, I focus on 140 Toronto Neighborhoods. Combining the data from the 2018 Toronto Social Capital Study (Environics Institute) and Toronto Neighborhood Pandemic Profile, I show that neighborhoods with higher levels of minority racial concentration show higher COVID-19 infection rates. I also show that cohesion social capital has a positive impact on reducing COVID-19 infection, while network social capital has a negative impact. However, they both play significant roles in mediating the association between minority concentration on COVID-19 infection. In the second study, I focus on over 3000 US counties. Combining data from the Social Capital Project (SCP) of the United States Congress’s Joint Economic Committee with the county-level information on COVID-19 from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, I replicate the first study. The patterns are consistent: higher levels of minority concentration are associated with higher COVID-19 infection rates. Cohesion social capital and network social capital show differential impacts, but they both significantly mediate the effect of minority concentration on COVID-19 infection. Results from these two studies illustrate that lack of social capital is one central mechanism underlying how racial and ethnic minorities experience the pandemic differently. Findings of this research also demonstrate the need to be more explicit about social capital’s different forms and how they may affect social outcomes differently. Cary Wu is Assistant Professor of Sociology at York University. His research focuses on political culture, race and ethnicity, and inequality. He often shares his research with the public via national and international TV, radio, and newspaper forums including NPR, CBC,CTV, The Washington Post, Toronto Star, Macleans, and The Economist. The webinar was on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, and was part of the regular webinar sessions held by the International Social Capital Association https://www.intsocialcapital.org/ as part of the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/intsocialcapital and LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13975650/
In this webinar, Associate Professors Claudia Morsut and Christian Henrik Alexander Kuran discuss the role of social capital in crisis management and its linkages with resilience, vulnerability and risk awareness. Using findings from the Horizon 2020 research project BuildERS (Building European Communities’ Resilience and Social Capital https://buildersproject.eu/), the two presenters illustrate which kind of relationships social capital establishes with resilience, vulnerability and risk awareness when individuals and local communities cope with a crisis or a disaster. They will provide concrete suggestions to address challenges in crisis management to strengthen social capital. About the presenters Claudia Morsut is Associate Professor of Societal Security at the University of Stavanger (Norway) and owns a PhD in International Relations from the Università degli Studi La Sapienza Rome Italy. Her main research interest revolves around the EU governance in disaster risk management, in disaster risk reduction and in civil protection. She was the local coordinator for the H2020 project BuildERS Building European Communities’ Resilience and Social Capital and the EU-UCPM-2020-KN-AG project ROADMAP European observatory on disaster risk and crisis management best practices. She is project leader in a national research project, RISKSEC2.0 Local climate change adaptation: from risk governance to securitisation strategies? She is also member of the Network on Transboundary Pandemic Crisis Governance, supported by the Nordic Research Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Her publications have examined the European Union civil protection policy and governance, the EU cooperation in security at global level, and the EU governance of migration. Christian Henrik Alexander Kuran is Associate Professor of Risk management and Societal Safety at the University of Stavanger (Norway). His main research interest is in the areas of accident investigation and safety in complex sociotechnical systems. He has participated as researcher in a variety of projects, such as BuildERS Building European Communities’ Resilience and Social Capital, and projects focusing on traffic safety, and human behaviour for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. His publications have explored safety in the heavy goods transport sector and the use of ethnographic methodologies in safety studies. The webinar was on Wednesday, November 2, 2022, and was part of the regular webinar sessions held by the International Social Capital Association https://www.intsocialcapital.org/ as part of the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/intsocialcapital and LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13975650/
This session provides a foundation for understanding what social capital is, where it comes from, and what it does as well as some of the challenges of reading the literature and conducting research on social capital. The session is designed to kick-start your social capital research or to help you with your existing research. The session gives you a blueprint for understanding the different meanings of social capital and how to navigate the literature on social capital. It is designed to give you a rapid introduction to the concept of social capital and its use in research, helping you avoid weeks or even months of reading. Who is this for? This session is designed for people who are new to social capital research or for anyone who would like to understand the concept better. It would suit PhD and Masters students and other people who are conducting research on social capital. This session was facilitated by Tristan Claridge, President of the International Social Captial Association. Tristan has been researching social capital for over 20 years. He has explored the theoretical foundations of the concept and much of his work aims to bring conceptual and theoretical clarification. https://www.intsocialcapital.org/
Some development goals are unattainable with any one type of social capital; some goals require configurations of the three types of social capital. In some instances, people create mutually reinforcing bonding, bridging, and linking social capital that enables them to achieve development goals, while simultaneously expanding all three types of social capital. However, the micro-sociological processes of building and maintaining the three types of social capital are not only difficult to combine, but can be contradictory. Conflicts between micro-sociological processes can make it difficult to maintain mutually reinforcing social capital over time. Mixed methods approaches can generate a more holistic understanding of the micro-sociological processes that make social capital configurations possible. These same methods can be used to understand the contradictory micro-sociological processes that make social capital configurations difficult to sustain over time. In this discussion, empirical research is used to illustrate one approach that combined the position generator method with ethnographic data to understand the processes that shaped mutually reinforcing social capital in riverine communities in the Brazilian Amazon. The webinar was on Friday, June 17, 2022, and was part of the regular webinar sessions held by the International Social Capital Association https://www.intsocialcapital.org/ as part of the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/intsocialcapital and LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13975650/
Just a small part of a very interesting webinar we had with Joseph Cabrera. Check the whole video on our YouTube channel!
Just a small part of a very interesting webinar with Prof. Robert Putnam. Check the whole webinar on our YouTube Channel!
Collaboration, and more of it, is often called for across many walks of life, the assumption being that more diverse contributions will improve outcomes and impact. As an innovation researcher with a scientific background, I have always been interested in the role of collaborative activity to successful (or otherwise) research projects. As we are well aware, the development of social capital is viewed as essential to collaboration. Over the years I have explored what appears to support the building of social capital, particularly when geographical proximity isn’t possible, such as in international collaborations and/or virtual organisations. With Urs Daellenbach, I published a paper on the role of social capital formation to a sense of identification in a virtual research organisation (British Journal of Management, 22(1), 2011, 54-76). Over ten years later, I find myself as Director of another large virtual research programme, the ‘Science for Technological Innovation” National Science Challenge (NSC), one of eleven New Zealand NSCs, launched since 2016 (www.sftichallenge.govt.nz). As an experiment in how to build collaborative, inter-disciplinary, mission-led projects co-designed with industry and Māori (New Zealand’s indigenous population), those same social capital notions have underpinned many innovative processes that SfTI has developed. I will first describe these new or adapted processes and their social capital platform, and then chat with Tristan about those SfTI experiences of the last 6 years. The webinar was on Friday, June 10, 2022, and was part of the regular webinar sessions held by the International Social Capital Association https://www.intsocialcapital.org/ as part of the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/intsocialcapital and LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13975650/
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Academic interest in social capital

Over the last three decades the concept of social capital has swept across the social sciences, into the physical sciences, and virtually every area of academic enquiry. It has been adopted outside of academia; in politics, business, and international development, to name a few. But some people have suggested that its popularity is in decline. The data, however, does not support this view.

This short video illustrates the rise of social capital in different fields using data from the Web of Science database. It shows how the number of publications on social capital has increased in each field over time.

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