Uncovering & building social capital Flashcards
Social capital (power)
Relationships with others- friends, colleagues, and more general contacts through whom you receive opportunities to use your financial and human capital
Capital
Resource that enables people and organizations to create value, get things done, and achieve goals
Financial capital
cash in hand, reserves in the bank, investments coming due
Human capital
health, intelligence, charm, looks
Benefits of Social Capital
Timing- knowing important information before competitors
Access- receiving valuable information
Referrals- getting your name to the right people at the right time
Diversity- knowing different types of information
Social Capital is not a free lunch
- is not idle
- not exclusively yours
- add value
- actively managing social capital
Types of Ties
Strong or weak
Strong tie
- Interact frequently
- Similar interests, attitudes, demographic, characteristics
- Know each other well
- Closely related
Weak tie
- Rarely interact
- Not similar to each other
- Don’t know each other well
- Not closely related
Benefits of Strong Tie
- Trust
- Emotional support
- Promotes cohesion
Benefits of Weak Tie
- Diverse information
- Diverse talent
- Shortens path lengths
-Often can help you get a job
Milgram’s Test (1967)
Most chains found their way through a small number of intermediaries
- Letters got to Boston much quicker than Milgram had theorized
- Letters disproportionately went through a few really well connected people
Most chains found their way through a small number of intermediaries
What makes the world small?
Even when most of our connections are local, any pair of people can be connected by a fairly small number of relational steps (few degrees of separation)
Fully connected network
All direct, path length=1
Star network
Only one central connection, path length=2
Characteristics of Dense Networks
- Everyone in the network tends to know the same information
- everyone in the network tends to have the same perspective on the world
- Cohesive group, with power to motivate and monitor its members
- These characteristics can be both good (foster trust) and bad (tough to reinvent yourself, lack of diversity of thought)
Characteristics of sparse networks
- More contacts who don’t know each other
- Limited number of strong ties, many weak ties
- Greater diversity of contacts
- Across parts of your firms
- Across hierarchical levels
- Outside of your firm
Why are there so many benefits to sparse networks?
Structural holes are opportunities
information benefit + control benefit
Anytime a network is not connect to another network there is a structural hole
Because you have control, you can be an information broker
Evolution of typical netowrk
Eventually grows flabby– everyone is connected
Targeted network expansion
Most networks tend to have too much closure and not enough brokerage – lean network
Why do dense networks occur?
- Self-similarity principle
2. Proximity principle
Self-similarity principle
We are inclined to form ties with people who have similar backgrounds, interests, training, and experience
Proximity principle
We are inclined to form ties with people who are in the same departments, units, and teams as ourselves
Shared activity principle
A diverse, cross-section of people engaged in the same activity
