Months ago my boss asked the simple question, whether social capital can be measured or not? I’m pretty sure my initial thought was ‘no’ and then ‘maybe, it depends on what you mean by measuring?’
My thought was that you would never be able to measure social capital exactly the same way as you would measure for instance physical capital; by numbers or by size of amount. Let’s talk about trust. If social capital consists of the amount of trust (and reciprocity etc.) we have to ask how trust is measured? By numbers? If that’s so I would have to ask what is behind those numbers? The number of times somebody has expressed or acted an act of trust? But then I’ve to ask again, how do the researcher know what constitutes trust for the actors?
My suggestion would be to ‘measure’ how trust is experienced by the actors? Which means that if we are to measure social capital we have to put up an alternative to the way mesurement is done at the moment. And that’s probably not done very easily as it would be the same as questioning western epistomology, the basis on which modern science, western culture create knowledge; by way of numbers. Numbers make a strong argument. We believe in quantity!
A few weeks ago I came across (or my boss did. Thanks) Dean Spitzer’s presentation. In it he argues for a new way of perceiving measurement (of performance). It’s a great inspiration as my work continues. *
* More Spitzer
I’m facing a challenge. Luckily wiser men and women have trotted the path before. She has. So has he. And they discuss it.
I’m talking about the struggle for legitimation, the struggle of how to convince managers and executives that humans and relations make up a bigger sum than the sum of single parts put together. And that it is that surplus that can translate into social capital depending on how it is managed. And that in the end social capital has an effect on competition and innovation strategies. And thereby effecting the bottom line as well. Not to mention the hardship in convincing anybody that they ought to have their organization investigated, the social relations analyzed, and the social capital measured.
I’m guessing that I have already lost readers by now. And those readers are not even potentiel buyers. Imagine that I stood in front of an audience of potential clients and I outlined the argument as above. I wouldn’t even make it to explaining what a relation is before being accused of living in an ivory tower.
I’m adressing the problem of language and presentation when you refuse to resort to simplified, reductionist models that I expect is valued by corporate culture. How to be convincing on complex topics such as networks? How to be taken seriously on complex topics such as relations? How to transform complexity into an argument of dynamacy? These are questions that make up my challenge #1.