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The purpose of this paper is to introduce and investigate social brokers who belong to and connect multiple groups in a social network. This paper also reveals the differential effects of innovative and following social brokers on content diffusion in terms of adoption timing, speed and size.

The paper collected field data related to 69,086 users on the largest social network platform in China and analysed their adoption behaviours of 2,492 pieces of content.

The analysis reveals that social brokers encourage content diffusion and accelerate the speed of content adoption in a social network. Specifically, following social brokers play a greater role than innovative social brokers in accelerating the speed of content adoption and expanding the size of content adoption. However, in the early stage of content diffusion within the social network, innovative social brokers could predict the success of content adoption more effectively than following social brokers.

This research extends the current diffusion literature by introducing the social broker and examining the effect of social brokers on the process of content adoption.

The findings provide suggestions to marketing managers on how to improve the diffusion of marketing-related content, such as by seeding specific people – that is, social brokers – with content, so they can serve as content transmitters in marketing campaigns. In addition, the findings suggest that to optimise content adoption in a social network, managers should strategically target innovative social brokers or following social brokers at various stages of content seeding-based marketing campaigns.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to test the effects of social brokers on content adoption and identify innovative and following social brokers. The findings enrich the literature on content marketing by providing new perspectives on social structures in social networks.

This paper aims to present multidisciplinary, research‐based insights into the challenges of changing behaviors at large‐scale in organizations and articulates practical approaches for leaders.

A literature review of research and practices of social and organizational change was conducted and thematically summarized. The themes were discussed and revised with input from twenty global leaders and a dozen university researchers at a two‐day conference held at Harvard University's Learning Innovation Laboratory.

Supporting changes of practice in organizations depends on a leaders understanding how to best affect collective behaviors. Emerging research from the fields of political science, social networking, and social change suggest that leaders can build three types of bridges that support large‐scale change: emotional bridges by creating strategic narratives, relational bridges by targeting social clusters, and structural bridges by leveraging pre‐existing social associations in organizations.

The themes illustrate practical approaches that leaders can use to diagnose the types of change they wish to support and offer concrete strategies for designing and supporting changes in collective behaviors.

This article aims to present a unique synthesis of emerging, multidisciplinary research on supporting collective change in organizations and offers an intuitive model to support leaders in their actions.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate how social capital is developed in a third sector organisation based in the north-west of England, a small food cooperative run by volunteers. Social capital comprises the bonds, bridges and linkages that hold together societal members, and it can be considered to be a precursor of economic capital.

Qualitative data were collected through interviews with key informants, observations and documents. Data were analysed using either a template or a thematic analysis to identify aspects of social capital development.

A model of the interactions between and within the three main stakeholder groups involved in the cooperative is presented. This model shows how these interactions can develop social capital, and it discusses how potential deficits in social capital can occur.

The findings have practical and theoretical implications, in that they may better equip third-sector organisations to understand how social capital is developed.

This is one of few practical studies of social capital development in a social enterprise and provides valuable insights into the processes by which this is done.

Social movement scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the process of “bridge building” in social movements – that is, the process by which activists attempt to resolve conflicts stemming from different collective identities. However, most scholars assume that social movements primarily attempt to resolve tensions among activists themselves, and thus that bridge building is a means to other ends rather than a primary goal of social movement activism. In this chapter, I challenge these assumptions through a case study of a “bridging organization” known as Bridge Builders, which sought as its primary goal to “bridge the gap between the LGBT and Christian communities” at a Christian university in Nashville, Tennessee. I highlight the mechanisms by which Bridge Builders attempted to facilitate bridge building at the university, and I argue that Bridge Builders succeeded in bridging (a) disparate institutional identities at their university, (b) “structural holes” between LGBT- and religious-identified groups at their university, and (c) oppositional personal identities among organizational members. As I discuss in the conclusion, the case of Bridge Builders has implications for literatures on bridge building in social movements, cultural and biographical consequences of social movements, and social movement strategy.

In expatriate-reliant countries, the challenge of attracting and retaining overseas talent remains, despite the COVID-19 global pandemic restricting international travel. Expatriates depend on formal organizational and host country national (HCN) support to facilitate their adjustment when moving abroad. To date, there has been a limited focus on the centrality of language in spanning boundaries between HCNs and expatriates that enables bridges to be formed. This study explored how language influences the social capital accrual and the support received by expatriates from HCNs.

Rooted in social constructionism, the authors used semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 20 Nigerian HCNs from two Italian organizations in the construction industry.

The findings highlight how language is key to effective social capital bridging and show how HCNs act as boundary spanners between local talent and expatriates on assignment. In this study, HCNs have superior language skills and can thus fill the semantic void in communication between the two parties. It emerged that expatriates receive more significant support and higher levels of social capital accrual than HCNs from this relationship.

Consideration should be given to providing formal language training to both expatriates and HCNs. Embedding networking relationships, such as buddying schemes or reverse mentoring, would enhance the social capital of both parties and improve performance. In addition, global talent management policies should be adjusted to provide definitive career paths and clearer promotion criteria for HCNs.

The authors find that through their language ability, HCNs may have more power over expatriates than previously considered, repositioning their status from a talent perspective. The authors argue that expatriates should not be considered by organizations the only source of global talent in such a context, and that organizations need to offer more definitive talent policies and support that accounts for both expatriates and HCNs.

The aim of this article is to explore the everyday life experiences of elderly (+70 years) living with young locals and refugees in a collaborative housing project before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. The paper discusses the importance of the spatial dimension in the conceptualization of social integration.

The main method is a qualitative case study based on observations of settings, document/video analysis, online diary entries made by ten residents and eight semi- structured interviews conducted with the residents.

SällBo was conceived as a new type of collaborative housing in which elderly, young locals and refugees share common spaces with the aim of enabling social integration. In this context, COVID-19 interrupted the ongoing processes of living together after four months of moving to the house. The three main themes that emerge from the empirical material are (1) changes in the use of common spaces and social interactions, (2) residents' resilient coping responses during the pandemic and (3) insights for future design of collaborative housing based on their experience. The pandemic caused a moment of institutional vacuum, which triggered the agency of the residents whilst developing social bonds and social bridges among them.

Social connection created in everyday life at SällBo's common spaces has triggered processes of social integration.

The ongoing processes of social integration have included the spatial dimension. We understand social integration as a process that involves people from different generations and ethnical backgrounds, which takes place in common spaces and everyday life as different modes of socialization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the objectives and overall approach of a faith-based homeless outreach campaign. It aims to stimulate wider discussion about how civil society can play a role in achieving participatory parity for the homeless.

Using a case study approach, this viewpoint paper then connects practical considerations to extant literature on community inclusion.

This particular homeless outreach campaign generated a tremendous amount of volunteerism – perhaps unparalleled relative to any other recent campaign driven by civil society. Yet it aimed only to funnel the homeless into the private social sector. Furthermore, most of the homeless people engaged on the streets did not complete the rehabilitation programs.

Campaigns such as this may need to adopt discursive habits in order to recognize the social distances that must be bridged between the housed and the homeless. With greater reflexivity, volunteers can use their interactions with the homeless to develop empathy, compassion, and understanding. Volunteers may then feel inspired to leverage their personal resources to address community perceptions of homelessness, or to advocate for systematic changes.

This paper suggests recasting the goals of homeless campaigns to include the development of social bridges between the housed and the homeless, which can guide advocacy efforts.

Organizational fields are shaped by both the relations that organizations forge and the language they express. The structure and discourse of organizational fields have been studied before, but seldom in combination. We offer a methodological approach that integrates relations and expressions into a comprehensive visualization.

By mapping networks and discourse as co-constitutive, the method illuminates the mechanisms active in organizational fields. We utilize social impact evaluation as an issue field shaped by the presence of an interstitial community, and compare this structure with simulated alternative field configurations.

The simulations reveal that variation in organizations’ openness to adopting concepts from adjacent meaning systems alters field configurations: differentiation manifests under conditions of low overall openness, whereas moderate receptivity produces hybridizations of discourses and sometimes the emergence of an interstitial community that bridges domains. If certain organizations are open while others remain focused on their original discourse, then we observe integration in the discursive domain of the invariant organizations.

The observations from the simulations are represented by visualizing organizational fields as topographies of meaning, onto which interorganizational relations are layered. This representation localizes organizations and their interactions in a cultural space while emphasizing how meanings of relationships and organizational expressions vary with different field configurations. By adding meaning to network data, the resulting maps open new perspectives for institutional research on the adaptation, translation, and diffusion of concepts.

Drawing on Putnam’s concept of social capital, this study aims to examine the oral life histories of women on management boards. It explores how the bridging and bonding forms of social capital are created and used to advance women’s careers to reach top management positions on corporate boards.

This study is both explorative and interpretive. A total of 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with female board members of Polish companies to gain access to their life histories.

Women develop social capital to advance their careers. However, they mainly focus on bonding capital, which allows them to sustain relationships within their inner circle. Bridging capital, which extends relationships to advance women’s careers, is often overlooked if not neglected. It seems it is usually an external shock when women understand the importance of bridging capital.

This study provides a better insight into how bridging and bonding capital help and/or distract women from reaching top managerial positions. It has potential policy-making implications for promoting women to leadership positions. The study results can guide organizations in providing equal opportunities for employees.

This study builds on previous research regarding the accumulation of human and social capital by board members. It encourages academics and practitioners to critically consider the relationship between bonding and bridging capital and the promotion of women to top management positions. This study provides access to a field of Central and Eastern European countries.

Questions whether, in the USA, faith‐based communities can have an important effect on politics. Contends that other areas, where there are poorer communities, are more likely to be influenced politically in civil society although does not preclude other income sectors from being similarly affected just that deprived areas are more likely to listen to faith‐based organizers.