Social Capital in Organizations.

Authors M. Oteman
Publication date 2008
Type Report

Summary

In my belief the effectiveness of organizations has more to do with managing people in a more ethical, sustainable and effective way than what is common these days. For example employees values like trust, respect and commitment are rarely considered as values that can contribute to social capital in organizations as an important and critical success factor. I will present the hypothesis that social capital in organizations exists and that is formed out of employees values like trust, respect and commitment and the process of creating social capital is influenced by leadership style and the way of decision making. A conceptual model to describe the relationships is shown in chapter 3. Chapter 4 defines social capital as dependent variable and presents important theoretical considerations from Putnam, Bourdieu, Coleman and Fukuyama leading to the conclusion that social capital is about a network sharing values and norms to cooperate freely and therefore effectively. The value of social capital derives from basic values like trust, respect and commitment, so is made clear in chapter 5 where these values are theoretically introduced and commented on. The process from basic value to social capital is influenced by leadership style and participating in decision making as is illustrated in chapter 6, that leads to the conclusion that it is profitable to invest in a proper way of leadership style and a proper way of decision making, causing the best amount of social capital. Another conclusion is that this field is empirically not well explored, but interesting.

Language English

Algemeen