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.     

Flexibility, Hierarchy, Markets

The conclusion that organizations need to become more strategically flexible as a response to increasing environmental dynamism and uncertainty has been an important feature of recent contingency theories of organization design. In this literature organizations have been analysed from the perspective of the development of networks of organizations concentrating on their core competencies and contracting among themselves on a stable long-term basis. This model of inter-firm relationships provides an alternative mode of organizational structuring to that arising from vertical integration, which, by contrast, is seen as fostering strategic inflexibility. In the literature on corporate restructuring and changes in ownership form arising from the markets and hierarchies perspective, we see a similar emphasis on the dysfunctional consequences of large-scale bureaucratic organization. Changes in ownership form are seen as a major means of providing more effective managerial control. In this paper we argue that linking the literature on flexibility emanating from contingency theories of organizational design and the markets and hierarchies perspective provides important new insights into current and emerging forms of organization.     

Use of a mixture model for the analysis of contraceptive-use duration among long-term users

This paper introduces a mixture model that combines proportional hazards regression with logistic regression for the analysis of survival data, and describes its parameter estimation via an expectation maximization algorithm. The mixture model is then applied to analyze the determinants of the timing of intrauterine device (IUD) discontinuation and long-term IUD use, utilizing 14 639 instances of IUD use by Chinese women. The results show that socio-economic and demographic characteristics of women have different influences on the acceleration or deceleration of the timing of stopping IUD use and on the likelihood of long-term IUD use.     

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.     

The Surrogate Henderson Filters in X-11

This paper explains the surrogate Henderson filters that are used in the X-11 variant of the Census Method II seasonal adjustment program to obtain trends at the ends of time series. It describes a prediction interpretation for these surrogate filters, justifies an approximation to the filters, proposed by Kenny & Durbin (1982), and proposes a further interpretation of the results. The starting point for the paper is unpublished work by Musgrave (1964a, 1964b). His work has continuing relevance to current seasonal adjustment practice. This paper makes that work generally available for the first time, and reviews and extends it.     

Blocking in two-level non-regular fractional factorial designs

In this paper we consider screening experiments where a two-level fractional factorial design is to be used to identify significant factors in an experimental process and where the runs in the experiment are to occur in blocks of equal size. A simple method based on the foldover technique is given for constructing resolution IV orthogonal and non-orthogonal blocked designs and examples are given to illustrate the process.