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Purpose: The social media have become powerful tools that can be used to do much more than connecting relatives and friends, helping find a job or providing advertising space. This study aims to present the benefits of combining the subjects related to Knowledge Sharing, Social Media and Social Capital theory. Design/methodology/approach: Literature review of 22 papers identified as relevant when combining the subjects Social Media, Social Capital and Knowledge Sharing. The 22 documents were subjected of content analysis. Findings: The analysis of the literature revealed two fundamental roles for social media within organizations - an operational role - working as a channel or tool; a transformative role - used to support organizational strategy. Research limitations/implications: The limitation of this study is related to the limited number of papers that resulted from the search. Practical implications: The benefits of combining the three subjects include improvements on informal communication, better collaboration and cooperation, and a positive influence on job performance and innovation. Originality/value: The proposed research agenda highlights the importance of future investigations into the sharing of tacit knowledge through Social Media; focusing on how to generate trust via Social Media and suggests research attention related to knowledge protection. RESUMO Objetivo: As mídias sociais tem se tornado uma ferramenta relevante, que pode ser usada para mais atividades do que simplesmente conectar parentes e amigos como, por exemplo, auxiliando a encontrar trabalho ou como um espaço para propaganda. O objetivo desta pesquisa é apresentar os benefícios da combinação dos tópicos Compartilhamento do Conhecimento, Mídias Sociais e teoria do Capital Social. Método: Revisão de literatura de vinte e dois artigos relevantes quando combinando os assuntos Mídias Sociais, Compartilhamento do Conhecimento e teoria do Capital Social. Os 22 artigos são submetidos a análise de conteúdo. Resultados: A análise da literatura revelou dois papéis fundamentais para as mídias sociais dentro das organizações - um papel operacional - funcionando como um canal ou ferramenta; um papel transformador - usado para apoiar a estratégia organizacional. Limitações da Pesquisa/Implicações : A limitação deste estudo está relacionada ao limitado número de artigos que resultaram da busca. Implicações Práticas: Os benefícios de combinar os três assuntos incluem melhorias na comunicação informal, melhor colaboração e cooperação e uma influência positiva no desempenho do trabalho e na inovação. Originalidade: Uma agenda de pesquisa é proposta para destacar a importância de investigações futuras sobre o compartilhamento de conhecimento tácito por meio das mídias sociais, focando em como gerar confiança pelas mídias sociais; sugere-se também atenção a pesquisas relacionadas à proteção do conhecimento.

The aim of the article is to assess changes in the perception of the state by students in the context of research concerning social capital. The paper studies whether the knowledge and the social competences gained during the three years of study are reflected in the perception of the state by young people. The paper uses the results of a survey analysis conducted at the universities in Poland and Lithuania. The theoretical part of the article presents chosen issues concerning social capital in relation to the state. The article presents conclusions regarding the assessment of changes in the perception of the state by young people in Poland and Lithuania in the context of democracy, social participation, trust and social norms. This research enables us to make a comparison of the results between the two countries and from two research periods and is an original contribution to the discussion about the role of the young generation in society. The results of the research indicate that the knowledge and the social competencies acquired during three years of study in most cases were not reflected in the change of perception of the state by Polish and Lithuanian young people.

The paper aims to provide a synthesis of Fukuyama's theory of social capital Three different conceptual issues are discussed in the article: definition paradigmatic framework, and methodology. Another aspect of Fukuyama's concept of social capital is discussed from the perspective of Fukuyama's great popularity in public policy since the nineties. The concluding part of the paper deals with Fukuyama's place in academic and policy discourse on social capital.

Purpose – Librarians and the library profession keep repeating that libraries contribute greatly to generating social capital by “building community”. However, little evidence of this has been presented. This paper aims to be a first step towards correcting this situation by asking whether public libraries matter in the creation of generalized trust. Design/methodology/approach – This study used quantitative data in analyzing macro-level data on whether public library expenditure could explain social trust patterns in the OECD countries. Additionally, a few qualitative interviews with public library leaders in the USA and Norway were used to indicate by what mechanisms, or by which processes, libraries generate generalized trust. Findings – The main finding is that public libraries seem the most important factor in creating generalized trust in the OECD area, even more so than efficient/impartial public institutions. However, there is the problem of causal direction. It might be the case that it is high trusting countries that prioritize public libraries. Therefore, times series data are needed as well as qualitative data on the process of trust creation in the library. Interviews with library leaders point towards the fact that they see outreach activities as creating trust and that people trust the library. Replication of these results, however, is crucial. Moreover, the findings appear to indicate that when the library's attention is directed at disadvantaged groups of non-users it is the widespread trust in the public library institution that breeds trust among these groups too. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding/theory of the creation of generalized trust in general and to the role of the public library in this process. This paper was written as part of the research project “PLACE: Public Libraries – Arenas for Citizenship” lead by Professor Ragnar A. Audunson, Oslo University College, and financed by the Research Council of Norway. The authors would like to thank members of the PLACE research group, master students in the class on information and cultural policy (fall semester 2007) within the LIS program at Oslo University College, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. They would also like to thank Professor Susan Clarke and the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) at the University of Colorado at Boulder for having provided an excellent work environment.

Scholars in the field of population health need to be on the constant lookout for the danger that their tacit ideological commitments translate into systematic biases in how they interpret their empirical results. This contribution illustrates this problematic by critically interrogating a set of concepts such as tradition, trust, social capital, community, or gender, that are routinely used in population health research even though they carry a barely acknowledged political and ideological load. Alongside this wider deconstruction of loaded concepts, I engage critically but constructively with Martin Lindstrom et al.'s paper “Social capital, the miniaturization of community, traditionalism and mortality: A population-based prospective cohort study in southern Sweden” to evaluate the extent to which it fits with other empirical findings in the extant literature. Taking as a point of departure the intriguing finding that social capital predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality only for men, but not for women, I argue that future research on the nexus of social capital, health, and mortality needs to frame gender not only as a demographic and statistical variable, but also as an ontological conundrum and as an epistemological sensibility.

Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. Because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital.

The paper is based on the New Institutional Economic Theory, which emphasizes institutions as a vital component in the creation of wealth and economic growth. It is widely accepted that formal institutions change rapidly through political and legislative decisions. Informal institutions are deeply embedded in customs, tradition and inherited behavioral norms. Thus, change comes at a very slow pace. This research is focused on the business ethics segment of informal institutions. The paper is based on the effects of institutional changes on the position and the slope of demand curve for ethical business behavior. Business people faced with opportunity costs that influenced their behavior. Additional statistical analyses provide evidence of business ethics perception, which is more expressed in the group of managers than in the administration group. Behavior of the middle-aged population differs significantly in comparison to other groups when deciding on ethical dilemmas in real business situations.

Since the pioneering study by Banfield, the North‐South gap in Italian social capital has been considered by international scholars as an example of how cultural diversity within a country can generate different developmental outcomes. Most studies, however, suffer from limited external validity and measurement error. This paper exploits a new and representative online lab‐experiment to assess social‐capital patterns in Italy. Unlike previous experiments, we do not inform participants about the geographic origins of their counterparts. This feature allows us to assess the North‐South gap in universal, as opposed to parochial, behavior. Results suggest that Southerners and Northerners do not systematically differ in generalized prosocial preferences. Only trustworthiness is higher among. Northerners, while they are statistically similar to Southerners in many other economic preferences such as cooperation, trust, expected trustworthiness, altruism, and risk tolerance. We also show that the gap in trustworthiness stems from the lower reciprocity of Southerners in response to large transfers, and it is characterized by the intergenerational transmission of norms. Possible policy implications are discussed.

Cultural values and social capital are important parts of the context that determines countries’ innovation performance (and, hence, economic development). This paper investigates the culture–innovation relationship in a European context, as well as the mediating role of the national-level trust in this connection. Data are used to test the hypotheses that a country’s innovation performance is influenced by its cultural value emphases and societal trust, and that the culture–innovation relationship is mediated by societal trust. Based on data from the Global Innovation Index and the European Social Survey covering 27 European countries, we find that innovation at the country level is positively correlated with the level of societal trust and with three cultural value dimensions: “Autonomy versus Embeddedness”, “Egalitarianism versus Hierarchy”, and “Harmony versus Mastery”. A multivariate SEM analysis reveals that when “Autonomy versus Embeddedness” is controlled, the two other cultural value dimensions are no longer significant. Further, a SEM path analysis confirms that the relationship between cultural values and innovation performances is completely mediated through the level of trust in a society. Overall, “Autonomy versus Embeddedness” has a stronger total effect than societal trust on a country’s innovation performance, but most of this effect is indirect, mediated through societal trust. Implications of our findings for the corporate level (i.e., entrepreneurs and managers) as well as for the institutional settings (i.e., policy makers) are discussed. It is suggested that for successful innovation to blossom, the actors on both levels should aim at strengthening the cultural emphasis on individual autonomy, institutional integrity and mutual trust.

A variável 'confiança' ganhou ultimamente largo uso nas pesquisas em ciências sociais e poucos conceitos parecem ter atraído tanta atenção de uma ampla variedade de disciplinas acadêmicas. Na ciência política. Nas teorias sobre capital social e cultura política, enfatizando sua importância para a democracia, a confiança tem sido considerada uma variável essencial para a compreensão das sociedades. Este trabalho aborda algumas das diferentes teorias que estão ligadas tanto à definição como aos efeitos da confiança generalizada e depois, tratará de questões ligadas à incerteza das medidas de confiança generalizada. The variable trust has become widely used in the social science research lately and few concepts seem to have attracted so much attention from such a broad variety of academic disciplines. In political science in the theories on social capital and political culture, emphasizing its importance for democracy, trus has been seen as na essential variable for the understanding of societies. In social capital theory the generalized interpersonal trust is often given a particularly important role to initiate virtuous circles of development in the societies. This paper will treat some of the different theories that are connected both to the definition and the effects of generalized trust and then issues connected to the uncertainty of the measurements of generalized trust.

In the past two decades there has been a growing emphasis within the international development industry on promoting group activity. In this paper we chart how interpretation of the loose concept of social capital has shaped donor and NGO discourses on, and their preoccupation with, groups. Donors are using blueprints of group cooperation in an asocial and aspatial manner that ignores local specificities of place, space, and cultural context. An empirical case is examined that demonstrates how donor discourse is reinterpreted, translated, and even rejected by players at different spatial scales. The reasons for the continued donor preoccupation with groups in the face of local resistances are explored.