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Hello Jochen & all,

Our approach is along the lines of Nahapiet & Ghoshal, but with one exception that we believe is important. In our approach, values, networks, and trust are antecedents of SC itself. We define SC as the socially derived potential for actions that contribute to the collective.  This recognizes that like values and trust, networks are important to understanding SC, but does not define the construct in terms of networks per se. This defines SC as an asset like financial or human capital, a resource which is distinct from its specific source (other than it is "social") or from how it is used. This approach is detailed in a chapter coauthored with Darryl Stickel and Sim Sitkin in a book which is coming out in a few months: Social Captial: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives edited by Viva Bartkus & Jim Davis (both at Notre Dame) and published by Edward Elgar. Unfortunately, this still does not get you the measure that you seek. If you need to build your own measure, however, it is critical that you are very precise with your definition and that your measure taps into that construct and only into that construct. I hope this helps.

Regards,

Roger C. Mayer

Rmayer@uakron.edu

Hello Roger,

thank you for your response. I'd be highly interested to learn more about the different forms of social capital.

We would like to assess social capital as an antecedent variable in a large sample of organizations. We follow the notion of Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998, AMR) that social capital constitutes the resources embedded within, available through, and derived from a network of relationships. Apparently, most research in that vein conducts network analyses in which the number of ties between people sums up to the amount of social capital. Our sample is far too big to conduct such analyses, therefore we have to depend on self-ratings of social capital provided by employees or key informants such as CEOs or HR executives. I have not found a proper scale for such a self assessment, though. To my knowledge, only Youndt and colleagues provide such a scale (e.g.,  Subramaniam & Youndt, 2005, AMJ), but their scale is targeted towards knowledge sharing and is therefore too specific to simply assess the resources drawn from the network of relationships.

Cheers,
Jochen


Jochen Menges
Institute for Leadership and HR Management
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of  <st1:placename w:st="on">St. Gallen</st1:placename></st1:place>
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Phone +41 71 224 31 83
Fax +41 71 224 23 74
E-Mail jochen.menges@unisg.ch

Hello Jochen,
What we have discovered is that there are several streams of research that are loosely coupled together and called social capital research, and one of these streams revolves around networks. Can you specify more clearly what it is you seek?
Regards,
Roger C. Mayer
 

From: <st1:personname w:st="on">Organizational Behavior Division Listserv</st1:personname> [mailto:OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Jochen Menges
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 12:20 PM
To: OB@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: social capital scale
 

Dear Colleagues,

I am searching for a scale to assess social capital in an employee survey. I am aware that most studies do sociomatrixes or some sort of net work analyses, but this is not applicable in our sample. I am looking for a typical 1-5 Likert-type scale. Does anyone know such a scale?

Thank you,
Jochen


Jochen Menges
Institute for Leadership and HR Management
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of  <st1:placename w:st="on">St. Gallen</st1:placename></st1:place>
Dufourstrasse 40 A
9000 <st1:place w:st="on">St.</st1:place> Gallen
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Switzerland</st1:place></st1:country-region>

Phone +41 71 224 31 83
Fax +41 71 224 23 74