Social Capital
- Shlomit Amichi
- Sep 1, 2007
- 3 min read
The term Social Capital received wide attention in the sociological discourse of the late 20th century. Many sociologists, including Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam, viewed interpersonal relationships as the social glue that structures a group and is responsible for its stability. These connections create commitment, trust, and expectations within the group. The resulting social fabric establishes communication channels and social norms and defines sanctions for deviating from them. Social capital empowers the individual and provides opportunities, whether or not they actively participate in the social connections.
Dimensions of Social Capital
Structural Dimension - refers to the hierarchy within the group and the network of connections between people. It places importance on one's social position in the group, the people with whom one connects, and the quality of those relationships.
Relational Dimension - Concerns the quality of connections formed and the interpersonal relationships that develop - relationships of trust, friendship, solidarity, commitment, and more.
Cognitive Dimension - This refers to the communicative aspect within the group, which involves creating social discourse, language, norms, and shared goals.
These dimensions will help us understand the significance of social capital for knowledge management projects in organizations.
Social Capital - An Important Component in Embedding Knowledge Management in Organizations
In academic discourse, considerable attention is given to studying organizations, their power relations, and organizational behavior. Organizations are complex social networks that include various subnetworks. Knowledge management processes aimed at sharing knowledge, organizational learning, and reusing existing knowledge rely significantly on the social capital that characterizes these networks. Even at the stage of characterizing a knowledge management solution, we examine the organizational structure to identify significant forces for leading the process and driving change; we focus on the cognitive dimension of capital to identify accepted communication channels, learn about information flow processes, and to identify experts; the relational dimension advances us toward success because it ensures employee cooperation - the willingness to contribute and share knowledge to ensure the success of colleagues, out of personal commitment and commitment to organizational values.
Knowledge Community - A Clear Case Based on Social Capital
A prominent example of social capital's role in knowledge management is the knowledge community. A community is a group with shared interests or concerns that meets both virtually and in person to discuss common issues, learn from other's experiences, and advance personal interests (obtaining information, professional development) or organizational goals (increasing revenue, reducing defect rates).
In the structural dimension, a community can support the formal structure of the organization, for example, customer service representatives belonging to a single organizational unit, or rely on a matrix structure - all investment advisors in a bank; service technicians from different units within the organization. In communities relying on expert knowledge, the natural community experts will be those responsible for knowledge in the organization. In contrast, we rely on the relational dimension in a community of peers where everyone is equal. From this perspective, the community's ability to survive over time depends on the goodwill of its members to participate and contribute their time and energy. However, busy employees will only bother to participate if they recognize that the community contributes to their success, streamlines their work processes, and produces solutions for them. It's important to remember that shared interests and knowledge needs are the reason for the community's existence. The common language and understanding of needs are the tools that guide it. These are all cognitive aspects.
Employees in an organization will not hesitate to ask questions in a professional forum - virtual or in-person - only if they know there is legitimacy to ask, that it's acceptable not to know, and that every question will receive a relevant, non-offensive, non-scolding answer. The relational dimension is responsible for building trust. The cognitive dimension is responsible for maintaining social norms, the boundaries of what is permitted and forbidden, and also for defining sanctions for those who transgress them - for example, deleting offensive messages (an action that takes place in the structural dimension - by the community manager) or social pressure to correct or change wording that does not conform to defined standards and does not advance the shared goal.
Organizational knowledge is a resource, like the organization's financial means, members, or culture. In its various dimensions, social capital has a decisive influence on the success of knowledge management projects in organizations and knowledge communities in particular. An in-depth study of the characteristics of social capital in the organization and its social networks will help us advance the project and the change management processes that accompany it.
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