10 - Social Capital in Hierarchical Structures

Summary

In the previous two chapters, I initiated a conceptual formulation in which motivations of actions are shown to lead to certain types of interactions and the utility of social capital. I suggested that actions lead to the emergence of social structures with increasing complexity of positions, authority, rules, and agency (Chapter 8). The purpose of this chapter is to extend this line of conceptualization by examining access to and use of social capital in the context of a complex social structure – an organization. Here I begin by assuming stable and functioning hierarchies such as organizations and assess how actors, through their positions, may or may not access better social capital – resources embedded in other positions, especially hierarchically higher positions. Thus, the concern here is, first, to demonstrate structural constraints and, second, to show how actions to access social capital operate within these constraints.

Recall that the theory of social capital proposes that, in addition to the principal proposition that social capital generates returns, two factors affect access to social capital (Chapter 5). The strength-of-position proposition hypothesizes that a given position of origin in the hierarchical structure determines in part how well one may gain access to better social capital. It is a structural factor and is independent of individuals in the structure, although individuals may benefit as occupants of the positions. In contrast, the strength-of-(network)-locations proposition hypothesizes the potential payoff for individual action.