Q.1.3 Organisations such as Facebook, Airbnb and Uber have harnessed social capital to grow their market shares and become major disruptive forces in their industries. Define and explain how a digital citizen can build and enhance social capital.

Social capital is about the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity (Dekker and Uslaner 2001 ; Uslaner 2001 ). Sander (2002, p. 213) stated that ‘the folk wisdom that more people get their jobs from whom they know, rather than what they know, turns out to be true’. Adler and Kwon (2002) identified that the core intuition guiding social capital research is that the goodwill that others have toward us is a valuable resource. As such they define social capital as ‘the goodwill available to individuals or groups. Its source lies in the structure and content of the actor’s social relations. Its effects flow from the information, influence, and solidarity it makes available to the actor’ (Adler and Kwon 2002, p. 23) . Dekker and Uslaner (2001) posited that social capital is fundamentally about how people interact with each other.

Source : Uknown, (2015), Social Capital [ONLINE]. Available at: http://marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Social-Capital.jpg [Accessed 7 May 2017].

References

Adler, Paul S, and Seok-Woo Kwon. 2002. ‘Social Capital: Prospects For a New Concept.’ Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review 27: 17-40. ^

 Dekker, Paul, and Eric M. Uslaner. 2001. ‘Introduction.’ Pp. 1 – 8 in Social Capital and Participation in Everyday Life, edited by Eric M. Uslaner. London: Routledge. ^

Sander, Thomas H. 2002. “Social capital and new urbanism: leading a civic horse to water.” National Civic Review 91: 213-221. ^