One of the most important thing to realize about social capital is that it gives you the capacity for action. That capacity for action often takes the place of other forms of capital, like intellectual or financial capital.
Tim Bosworth oversimplifies things when he says in this post that social capital is “basically who and how many people you know.” That’s part of it, but just knowing a bunch of people doesn’t mean it’s social capital; at that point, it’s just social.
Fortunately Tim goes on and quotes Ron Burt who includes this capacity for action. Ron describes it in terms of receiving “opportunities” (my emphasis added).
The player (actor) has social capital: relationships with other players…friends, colleagues, and more general contacts through whom you receive opportunities to use your financial and human capital. Structural Holes; the Social Structure of Competition(Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 8-9).
I couldn’t agree more with this part: “through whom you receive opportunities to use your financial and human capital.” Unless you receive these opportunities, then it’s just social. This is worth repeating, put another way:
Social capital can take the place of financial capital.
In today’s economic realities, this one point makes it more important than ever to develop your social capital.
(This post is about what social capital is. As for how to develop social capital, that’s what I wrote about in yesterday’s post, Developing Social Capital: Why Should I Care How You Feel?)
23. January 2009 by Craig Peters
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