Call for Papers: Putting Social Capital to Work

10 January 2007 at 5:10 pm Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

Those of you studying networks, clusters, and social capital may find this Call for Papers of interest:

Doing business is a profoundly social process. Social capital and its dynamics, therefore, are inescapable components of every interaction. Among other things, they affect group cohesiveness and functionality, and they give advantages or disadvantages to some individuals and groups relative to others. This special issue of Business History will explore the research and analytical opportunities in putting social capital to work.

Full details:

—————– EH.NEWS POSTING —————–
Call for Papers
Business History
Special Edition in September 2008
Putting Social Capital to Work
Edited by Pamela Walker Laird, Charles Harvey, and John Wilson

Doing business is a profoundly social process. Social capital and its dynamics, therefore, are inescapable components of every interaction. Among other things, they affect group cohesiveness and functionality, and they give advantages or disadvantages to some individuals and groups relative to others. This special issue of Business History will explore the research and analytical opportunities in putting social capital to work.

Although the concept of social capital itself has only begun to enter historical analysis, both scholarly and everyday discourses energetically engage the language of networks. Networks are the conduits through which social capital operates and through which information and influence flow. Economic transactions and functions are of necessity embedded within social networks characterized by varying degrees of intimacy, loyalty, hierarchy, and expectations for reciprocity. The connections that make up networks are assets that individuals and groups can hold, invest, waste, or grow. Moreover, like the other assets that affect our prosperity, social capital is distributed unevenly through populations, and these disparities have enormous consequences.

Most scholarly applications of the concept of social capital have come out of the social sciences, which pioneered the concept. In 2000, political scientist Robert Putnam popularized the century-old but obscure phrase “social capital.” Sociologists Ronald Burt (2005), Mark Granovetter (1976), and Robert Waldinger (1996), among others including economists, have linked the sizes and types of networks to entrepreneurial success, as well as jobs, wages, and promotions. Francis Fukuyama (1995) looked at the importance of trust in building prosperity through personal relationships. In management studies, especially on organizational behavior and entrepreneurship, discussions of networks, mentors, and gatekeepers abound, such as in the work of Gerald R. Ferris. Pamela Laird (2006) applied social science and management studies in her analysis of the effects of social capital on individual and group success across three centuries of American history.

Papers might offer theoretical innovations, or they might apply some aspect of social capital analysis to their empirical research, possibly reframing evidence to demonstrate insights and explanations obscured by previous failures to apply the concepts and lexicon of social capital. Research conducted specifically to uncover the social capital dynamics of an historical period, process, or case in business history will be especially attractive.

Topics that lend themselves to a social capital analysis include biography; corruption; crime; firms’ internal dynamics, such as hiring and promoting; firms’ external interactions, such as seeking or letting contracts, negotiating deals, or working with a government; labor pools among various ethnicities or communities; immigration; entrepreneurial interactions with political bodies or communities; public relations as exercises in building social capital; the value of trust in business interactions; business-to-business and retail selling; product and advertisement design; and the impacts of class, ethnic, racial, gender on individuals’ or groups’ types and styles of business activities, as
well as on their opportunities or constraints.

The editorial team intends that the articles featured in “Putting Social Capital to Work” will extend our understandings both of how social capital operates within business and of how social capital can serve as an analytical tool to enrich scholarship. We encourage contributions from a variety of countries and areas of expertise.

The special issue will be edited by Pamela Walker Laird as guest editor, and Charles Harvey and John Wilson as executive editors of the journal. All articles will be between 6,000 and a maximum of 8,000 words, including notes.

Proposals of not more than 500 words should be sent to the Business History Editorial Office, Professor John Wilson, Institute of International Business, Lancashire Business School, Greenbank Building, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE 01772 894788, United Kingdom. Additionally, e-mail proposals to all three editors:

Pamela.Laird@cudenver.edu
Charles.Harvey@strath.ac.uk
jfwilson@uclan.ac.uk

Proposals should give the details of (a) proposed title of article; (b) author names and affiliations; (c) full details of research on which the article is to be based; (d) content of the article.

The timetable for the special issue is as follows:

December 2007 – Issue Call for Papers
18 March 2007 – Deadline for receipt of Proposals
April 2007 – Articles commissioned
31 October 2007 – Reminder to authors of approaching deadline for manuscripts
30 November 2007 – Deadline for receipt of first draft manuscripts
10 February 2008 – Completion of refereeing process & editorial reports
28 February 2008 – Issue reports to authors with requests for revisions
30 April 2008 – Deadline for submission of revised drafts
31 May 2008 – Return manuscripts to authors for final revisions
30 June 2008 – Deadline for submission of final articles
September 2008 – Publication

Guidance Notes

1. Articles should be based upon original research and/or innovative analysis. 2. The main findings of the research and analysis should not have been published elsewhere. 3. Proposals will be welcome from individuals or teams whose empirical research is already at an advanced stage. 4. The editors expect articles to be theoretically informed and explicitly to address novel interpretations of history. 5. Authors who wish to implement social science or managerial instruments of analysis should consider how to adapt them to historical interpretation, explaining change across time rather than the description of static conditions.