Too Much Investment in Social Capital?

✍ Scribed by Charles Kadushin

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 104 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-8733
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2004.01.009

✦ Synopsis

I am baking a cake and have run out of sugar, but I can go to my neighbor next door to get some. It was worth being nice to that neighbor even though I did not particularly fancy her. Do I have to return the sugar? Maybe she can borrow my lawn mower the next time she needs to mow her lawn and that will count as a return of the favor. Maybe the value of the sugar is trivial enough not to require repayment in kind. Now I need a recipe for a new cake. My neighbor has just the right recipe for me. But there is really nothing to return except for good will because in giving me a copy of the recipe my neighbor still has it. A guy three houses down the street whom I do not know has heard from my neighbor that I know something about computers and asks me to help him. I am busy but feel obligated to at least try to help because we all live in the same neighborhood. Someday I will have to ask a neighbor, maybe even a different one, for help in fixing that darn lawnmower. What goes around comes around. In fact, I am really in a bad mood because the cake was not ଝ Nadav Halevy pointed me in the direction of various readings in economics. Barry and Beverly Wellman read the manuscript meticulously and made important suggestions. Social Capital of Organizations. Research in the Sociology of Organizations.