The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Capital: Empirical Evidence from Two Organizations in the United Kingdom *

Recently, there has been a shift in the way management scholars view the firm, from traditional models that are based on ideas of opportunism and market failure to newer knowledge‐based theories that argue for a more socialized perspective. One of the key components of these theories is the notion of social capital. Social capital is the set of resources that accrue to an individual or group by virtue of their social connections. As such, it is a resource that is jointly owned. Most recent research adopts a more‐is‐better approach to social capital, suggesting that individuals with larger quantity of ties derive more positive benefits. However in this paper, we argue that using social capital has both benefits and drawbacks for organizations, and that these positive and negative aspects of social capital occur simultaneously. To substantiate our claim, we use data collected from sets of interviews with senior and middle managers in two organizations in the United Kingdom. Our findings indicate that while social capital has many beneficial effects with respect to information access and retrieval, community building, and underlying group norms, there are also a number of less‐beneficial aspects, which are under‐explored in the current empirical literature. Furthermore, we suggest that organizations must develop an understanding of the bridging and bonding elements of social capital, as these are critical for its implementation. Implications of the research findings and future research directions are discussed.     

Researching performance measurement system implementation: the dynamics of success and failure

There is a growing literature concerned with the design and implementation of performance measurement systems but few studies of success and failure. This paper describes three phases of research into design and implementation of performance measurement systems involving 16 different businesses. The conclusion from the research is that senior management commitment is a key driver of success, but the paper will also describe the main factors which influence and change this commitment over the life of a performance measurement implementation project.     

Mixed Results, Lousy Process: the Management Experience of Organizational Change

This paper reports the findings of a survey of 92 managers, from 14 public and 14 private-sector organizations. The aim was to explore the experience of change, extending the findings of a previous study (Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle, 1999). The survey addressed six themes: communication, evaluation, learning, attitudes and relationships, implementation and change and continuity. Overall, the results present a bleak picture of the process and outcomes of contemporary change. Most managers claim that change responsibility affords valuable personal learning. However, recent change has also been accompanied by stress, work intensification, command and control and management–employee distrust. A comparison of public and private–sector responses suggests that the experience of change in the public sector has been more pressured than in the private sector. Comparison of responses by management level indicates that senior managers are more likely to hold positive views of the change process and its outcomes. Explanations for these differences in experience and perception are considered, along with the implications. It is concluded that an adequate theory of organizational change must address the contradictions and tensions in the lived experience of those implicated, and that effective practice should consider the linkage of change implementation with organizational learning mechanisms which, on this evidence, are absent.     

Tweaking the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in family firms: the effect of control mechanisms and family-related goals

Management literature is currently giving growing conceptual and empirical attention to the peculiarity and relevance of entrepreneurial attitudes in family firms, with divergent outcomes. Aiming at concretizing the effects of these attitudes, denoted by the entrepreneurial orientation construct, on family business performance and considering that family dynamics come into play in this relationship, we particularly investigate the impact of control mechanisms and family-related goals. Findings are based on a sample of 180 family firms and show that Proactiveness and Autonomy are particularly relevant to financial performance. Agency-problems avoiding control mechanisms moderate the effect of Innovativeness and Autonomy, while socioemotional wealth (SEW) goals moderate the effect of Risk-Taking, respectively. The usage of these mechanisms and managing SEW goals provide opportunities for a more efficient exploitation of entrepreneurial attitudes.     

Palliative medicine in Britain

In Britain, Palliative Medicine was recognized as a subspecialty of Internal Medicine exactly 20 years after Cicely Saunders founded St Christopher's, at exactly the same time that government was at last recognizing the worth and the needs of general practice. Both had far-reaching effects and implications for patients, doctors, and the future of medicine. For Palliative Medicine it meant units wishing to train specialists going through a rigorous selection process; the development of an equally rigorous training program for the doctors who had already gained a higher qualification before starting Palliative Medicine, demonstrating the need for and benefits of palliative medicine to the sceptics in the profession and, now, continuing to recruit the staff for the steadily increasing number of new services. Today there are more Palliative Medicine consultants/specialists than there are oncologists and neurologists combined, with Hospital Palliative Care Teams in every major hospital and cancer center. With nine Chairs in Palliative Medicine, there is now a drive for research and professional education. The specialty faces major challenges, however, ranging from training to care for patients with non-malignant disease to enabling patients to die in the place of their choice-something that rarely happens today; from defining what is distinctive or unique about palliative medicine to clarifying the respective place of general practice and the specialty. Most would agree that the biggest challenge for the young, thriving specialty is how to share its principles with other doctors wherever they work.