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In recent years, there have been a growing number of references to social capital, in debates about higher education (HE), by policy makers, senior institutional leaders and academics. This chapter highlights the value of social capital to both students and institutions alike, as a contributing factor to the transformational effect of HE; and as an important tool to explain the value of HE to policy makers and the public. We draw on empirical data from students articulating the value of social capital. Their voices demonstrate that social capital has a significant role to play in institutional endeavours to maximise student success.

This article attempts to begin the process of removing the cloak of causal ambiguity by examining the role that knowledge management has in the creation of the wide variety of competitive advantages found in some organizations. Specifically, this article aims to extend understanding in the field of knowledge management by examining how knowledge management can affect organizational performance, and by examining one possible determinant of an organization's capacity to manage knowledge.

Reviews literature on resources‐advantage theory of the firm, social capital and knowledge management to propose ways within the organization to improve their ability to manage knowledge and achieve sustained superior performance. The paper is structured around the following constructs: resource‐advantage theory of the firm, social capital, and knowledge management.

Describes the relationship between social capital and knowledge management and how both help organizations achieve a sustained superior performance within the market. Suggests that organizations with high levels of social capital have more knowledge‐management capabilities than organizations with low levels of social capital.

This article extends prior research of knowledge management by proposing how social capital can positively impact the ability of organizations to manage knowledge.

Since resources within all businesses are relatively limited, and particularly so when the business is small relative to its competitors, the revelation that social capital can lead to more effective knowledge management makes the decision to support and nurture social‐capital development much more credible.

Because there is no existing literature that has examined the relationship between social capital, knowledge management, and organizational performance, this paper provides a foundation for future studies that examine the relationship between social capital and knowledge management.

This study aims to investigate the effects of social capital (defined as networks) on the performance of Chinese private enterprises.

The paper employ an econometric model to test relationships between social capital and firm performance, using a sample of private enterprises in a survey in China in 2000.

The analysis suggests two findings. First, memberships in various organizations do not appear to be significant in affecting the performance of Chinese private enterprises. Second, short‐time investment in, and the flow of, social capital are significant determinants of enterprise performance.

The study examines only the effects of the short‐time investment in social capital. Further research is suggested to examine the effects of long‐term investments in social capital, the relationship between short‐time investment and long‐time investment in social capital, and the network as a whole, including informal networks.

The paper uses the survey data in China to test Krishna's hypothesis which suggests that short‐term investments can play a positive role in the financial performance of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance of the theory of social capital for the challenges presented during environmental management initiatives in higher education institutions (HEIs). In particular, the paper utilises the fundamental components of social capital theory and assesses a hypothesis that higher stocks of social capital result in benefits for environmental management of HEIs.

An introduction of the concept of social capital and its components is presented followed by a brief review on its main connections with environmental policy and management in general. An analysis of the influence of each component on several issues occurring during the environmental management of HEIs follows.

Through the analysis, it is claimed that social capital is a useful concept for the environmental management of HEIs and may significantly facilitate such initiatives.

The paper emphasizes the effect of community social capital in the internal functioning of organizations. Further research could also explore the influence of dealings with external actors.

The paper emphasises the importance of exploring the potential influence of social factors while planning environmental initiatives. Through such assessments, several obstacles may be overcome during implementation procedures.

This is a first attempt to explore the application of the theory of social capital for the functioning of the academic community during initiatives for the greening of HEIs.

This paper aims to analyze the role played by two dimensions of entrepreneurs' private social capital in the survival, growth and innovativeness of entrepreneurial service ventures: local size and preferential attachment degree.

Data were collected by a questionnaire, the unit of investigation being the private entrepreneur in the service sector in the city of Shanghai. The questionnaire allows the authors to identify the social network of the entrepreneurs, estimate the empirical degree distribution for the entire sample, and estimate local size and preferential attachment degree.

There is empirical evidence that entrepreneurs do not create social networks with preferential attachment structure and a large local size of the network increases the chances of survival of new ventures; however, the chance to become a dynamic venture is only related to entrepreneurs' preferential attachment degree.

Any entrepreneurial strategy should include an investment plan to generate a minimum level of social capital or guanxi. Additionally, efficient strategy to generate social capital for dynamic entrepreneurship should focus on the creation of quality social capital. The underestimation of the role of social capital seems to have a deeper impact when analyzing the phenomenon of entrepreneurial innovation.

This conclusion suggests that the role of social capital in the entrepreneurial process could be underestimated systematically, since most of the literature only considers local measures of social capital. This underestimation seems to have a deeper impact when analyzing the phenomenon of entrepreneurial innovation.

The objective of this paper is to leverage a two-sided view of social capital to develop a model of board gender diversity and firm performance using social capital data from Northeast Regional Center of Rural Development.

The authors examine a large sample of 2,322 US publicly listed firms over the period 1996 to 2009. The final sample consists of 14,634 firm-year observations.

The authors find that when a firm's social network is not supportive of gender diversity, corporate boards have lower levels of female representation. The strength of a social network's social ties exacerbates the relationship between social capital and board gender diversity. The authors also report a negative relationship between female board membership and firm performance in social networks that are not pro-diversity. Robustness tests reveal that the authors’ social capital view of board diversity also applies to board ethnic diversity.

This study focuses primarily on blue chip firms due to data constraints. It will be interesting for future researchers to investigate a broader spectrum of firms from a broader perspective of diversity beyond the study’s gender and ethnicity findings. Furthermore, this study assesses the US context, and future research could investigate firm sociability in other national contexts.

This study contributes new insights to the discourse on gender diversity on corporate boards which stand to inform both policy and practice. The results of the study can inform the position of an industry association on board gender diversity, with guidance on how messaging across networks can be more effective should it account for the hidden bias that the authors uncover in the current study. From a manager's perspective, this study can help those managers and boards trying to enhance board gender diversity by providing a more complete understanding of the factors that can limit progress.

This study contributes a social capital view of board gender diversity to the growing literature of corporate governance, board diversity and local environmental influences on corporate policies.

This paper promotes a critical approach to co-operative studies by contributing new theoretical insights. The aim is to propose a new view on the co-operative firm as a socioeconomic phenomenon embedded into the local contexts in which it is situated. Sociological and economic analyses have mainly explored the relationship between co-operative members and the organization, the economic performance of co-operatives or compared co-operatives with other firm types. Less attention has been given to the co-operative–territory relation, which can reveal insights into members' collective actions, a co-operative's origins from specific social groups or how they establish relationships with certain community stakeholders over others.

The paper begins with a literature review of academic studies that situate co-operatives in relation to community, with a focus on how social capital theory has been deployed to understand this relation. It then proposes a theoretical examination of two fundamental authors in the field of social capital theory: Robert Putnam and Pierre Bourdieu. Drawing on findings from the literature review and considerations derived from the theoretical dialog between Putnam and Bourdieu, the paper proposes a revised social capital-based framework for analyzing key relations and expected outcomes of the co-operative–territory relation.

Reconsidering the role of social capital theory for co-operative studies, this article unfolds a dual reflection. First, it underlines the necessity for research that more closely considers co-operatives' territorial relationships. Second, it critically interrogates and pushes forward social capital theory as a framework for examining the social relations that embed co-operatives and their capacity to activate territorial economies.

The paper highlights the necessity for a further examination of the co-operative–territory relationship. It presents an innovative framework for improving sociological understanding of co-operatives as organizations embedded into their local socioeconomic contexts.