Social Capital
Social capital is often interpreted as a by-product of building a social network, particularly when there is a sufficient level of trust for network members to communicate effectively and provide each other with valuable resources. A person with a lot of social capital is someone with a social network that enables them to find out information and access resources. Social capital is also theorised in terms of the trust generated by relationships. A trusted person has more social capital than someone who is not trusted because the trusted person will find it easier to communicate effectively with other network members and will find it easier to access resources within the network. For example, if your enterprise does not have good relationships with trade unions (or trade union members), customers and an investment community, it will also have less social capital that other enterprises. An enterprise with good labour, customer and (public, social or private) investor support will have more social capital too. When considering social capital, think about the size of the social networks created (or harmed) by enterprise/project activities. It comes from networks of people who have high trust relationships.
Return to Capital
