Social Capital of Social Capital Researchers

Abstract

This paper investigates the co-authorship network of star researchers from different disciplines who work on social capital. There has been a recent surge of interest in social capital. Articles on social capital that are published in the last five years constitute more than 60 percent of all articles on social capital. Research on social capital now spans sociology, economics, management, political science and health sciences. Despite this interest there is still not a consensus on the definition and the measurement of social capital. This is partially due to lack of interaction between disciplines. By employing a simple social network analysis this paper shows that the social capital of social capital researchers is low between disciplines. Different from other theories of capital, social capital theory has concurrently been developed by various disciplines and as such, research across disciplines will improve our understanding of social capital.