In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work

Rating:
Summary: Pointing Out the Intangible Values of Positive Connection
Review: "Social capital consists of the stock of active connections among people, the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible." What is new about this book is that it applies this sociological concept to business enterprises.

As the authors point out, having more social capital inside an organization is good, but it is not sufficient to create a successful enterprise. Digital Equipment is used as an example of this point. Also, organizations can have social capital and be serving harmful ends (the Nazis are used as an example).

The authors feel that there are important limits to what free agency, telecommuting, virtual organizations, and hoteling offices can accomplish because their basis in social capital will be weaker.

On the positive side, they argue for hiring and encouraging people who fit the values and culture of the organization, and creating an environment in which social capital will build. To do this, companies should actively take steps that build trust, networks and communication through making appropriate spaces and time available, and help people learn through effective story telling.

The benefits of this approach will be better knowledge sharing, lower transaction costs, lower turnover of key employees, better coherence of action due to organizational stability and more shared understanding. You may also see more creativity if people are allowed to experience the intrinsic pleasures of making the future.

I thought that the best part of this book was in the detailed look at the various kinds of stories that organizations tell and what their purposes are. This book extended my understanding of that subject, which is an important one for communications.

The main drawback of the book is that it does not address social capital in terms of the connections between the individuals in the organization and most stakeholders (like customers, suppliers, partners, owners, lenders, and the communities the company serves). These connections are more important in those dimensions discussed in the book than the equivalent connections within the company. So this omission is a pretty significant limitation of the book.

The major secondary drawback of the book is that those who work in organizations like the ones described here with lots of social capital (UPS, SAS Institute, and J & J) will probably find little that is new. For those who are insensitive to the importance of social connections, this book will seem too amorphous and nonquantitative to change minds. If the target is to make those with low emotional intelligence become more effective and supportive, this book won't make the grade. It's preaching to the choir, without enough discipline in defining its prescriptions. For example, the book argues that cubicles with lots of sight lines are great for improving communications. But those who need quiet time and places to work for extended periods will tell you that cubicles drive them up the wall and reduce certain kinds of productivity. What's the best way to encourage both more communications and quiet thinking time when it's needed?

If you are interested in seeing lots of case histories on these subjects, you would probably enjoy the parts of The Dance of Change that focus on improving communication, trust, and connection.

After you finish this book, think about where your organization needs more trust, where you need more connections within and without the company, and how you can create a more cohesive creativity on the significant opportunities that face you.

Be open to the positive potential of the new, and help others to see it also!

Rating:
Summary: Common sense, uncommon insight
Review: If I could inflict one book on business executives this year, this would be it. In arguing that social capital within organisations has a value, and that there are ways to encourage it, the authors will not surprise most corporate infantry. But they draw together the human strands of this topic - trust, networking, the office environment, gossip - in an elegant and compelling way, and turn an insightful lens towards everyday facets of employee interaction. While the approach is scholarly, there's enough case study and anecdote to give their case a grounded authenticity. It's extremely well written, and the ideas it brings together beg for enlargement and further research.

Rating:
Summary: Good Company Makes for Good Business
Review: Larry Prusak and Don Cohen do a wonderful job in their book, In Good Company, of helping organizational leaders understand the social capital phenomenon in all of its exquisite messiness. This is an excellent work for anyone who cares about the quality of organizational life and the ability to do great things at work. Larry and Don do an outstanding job of showing how a number of important firms, including UPS, 3M and HP, take the matter of social capital very seriously and make investments in building and nurturing it.

I would suggest this book as a bit of "contrarian" reading for KM emthusiasts, thinkers and practitioners who favor a more technocentric approach. In Good Company digs into the profoundly social aspects of work, knowledge sharing and learning and offers a heavy dose of reality in its discussion of "the challenge of virtuality." After reading In Good Company, my hope is that it will help all of us build our understanding of what individual, collective and organizational success truly looks like and requires of us in these extraordinary times!

Rating:
Summary: I was glad someone noticed!
Review: This is a good and helpful read. While Cohen and Prusak do tend to say a lot of things that one has a gut feeling of but has never read or heard someone say aloud about working relationships, some of it was really fascinating. They have a particularly interesting chapter on chat and storytelling and the functions those activities serve at work. The theme of the book is that organizations should invest in social capital the way they invest in other kinds of capital, but that such investments can't be faked. Workers know when the love is real, so to speak.

The writers address particularly cogent trends of telecommuting and volatile industries and how those can cause stress in organizations because they lower social capital. They had some interesting points. One thing I particularly responded to was the chapter on trust. They wrote that when someone says their organization is particularly political, what they are saying is
that there is very low trust. Another thing they wrote that really interested me is that the virtual office isn't going to succeed - and hasn't as predicted - because work is an inherently social activity. That's one of the reasons people like it and are dedicated to it. Not that many people are ever going to want to work at home in their pajamas - every single day. They also suggest that money isn't the only effective lure for new talent or retainer of current employees. They write that if talent can just be bought, it will be, but if you create high social capital in your organizations, money alone won't be able to suck the talented people from your offices.

[The book made me want to read more by Chris Argyris, who is an organizational pyschologist at Harvard, and the book "The Social Life of Information."]

Rating:
Summary: Work as Social Process
Review: Why do new CEOs staff the company with their men?
Why are women under-represented un the business world?
Why could some succeed in launching and establishing new enterprises while other couldn¡¯t manage do so?
Why are the MBA degree craved, while there is no link between MBA results and future salary?
Social capital is supposed to be the answer to these questions. Social capital is widely exploited to emphasize the social nature of work: the work is the social process. Previously, corporate culture is used to point out such a nature. Organization¡¯s culture means the set of rites and rituals that give it its unique character. Culture is the ¡®way things are done around here.¡¯ The HP way, for example, the open-plan, walkabout management style laid down in the 1950s, by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, a style that still imbues the company today. But culture is a elusive concept. It¡¯s too soft to be managed. One executive asserted that ¡®the only culture round here is in the yoghurts in the canteen.¡¯ Nevertheless, though too soft to grasp, it¡¯s very real one. So many M&As have been botched for clashes between corporate cultures. It¡¯s real but too elusive to manage and grasp. Social capital is introduced to ground it on tangible material base. Then what is social capital? Social capital refers attributes like trust, commitment, attachment and so forth which belongs to active connections among people, in other word, network and community.
When the God decided to put a stop to human-being¡¯s first great collective enterprise, he confused their language so they could no longer understand one another, and could not carry out the joint project, Tower of Babel. Carry a heavy stone could be done without words. The real problem was the loss of understanding that cannot be mimed or diagrammed. Without common speech, the tower¡¯s planners could not have inspired others to join the project, workers could not have learned to trust each other¡¯s judgment, resolve unexpected problems together, or count on each other¡¯s help in dangerous situations. In other words, what they lost was not just common language, but the social capital which was probably more critical than the failure of information exchange.
Some schools in economics of organization characterized the firm as the flow of information. It¡¯s hard to deny. In this regard, however, corporate culture is no more than each company¡¯s idiosyncratic frame to each processing info: the firm is no more than a cybernetic system. But the firm is a social process built on community and network. Culture is what resides in community and network within personnel.
Moreover, organization¡¯s knowledge and capabilities lies not in official hierarchy but in unofficial community of practice. Most job training occurs after workers join a firm. They learn by dong on the shop floor. There is always a manual that describes how to operate a particular machine or conduct a job. As times passes, however, workers are apt to devise better ways to do the job and surpass the manual. And this is the collective process. As they work together, knowledge slowly moves from person to person. Network and community are not only the repository of corporate knowledge and capacities, but also the incubator of collaboration, especially voluntary collaboration that does not rely on external incentives. They help create and sustain our personal identities, the intrinsic satisfactions of praise, respect, and gratitude from fellow members. Those have more meaning and power than little prizes or even monetary rewards.
Now, I think, you¡¯ve got what is social capital. Above, I followed the style of the book which does not burden the reader with abstract concepts, but illustrate the picture of social capital with real world examples, to enlighten readers to the practical meaning of social capital in their own workplace. With closing the last page. I bet you get the crux and import of social capital.

Rating:
Summary: Work as Social Process
Review: Why do new CEOs staff the company with their men?
Why are women under-represented un the business world?
Why could some succeed in launching and establishing new enterprises while other couldn¡¯t manage do so?
Why are the MBA degree craved, while there is no link between MBA results and future salary?
Social capital is supposed to be the answer to these questions. Social capital is widely exploited to emphasize the social nature of work: the work is the social process. Previously, corporate culture is used to point out such a nature. Organization¡¯s culture means the set of rites and rituals that give it its unique character. Culture is the ¡®way things are done around here.¡¯ The HP way, for example, the open-plan, walkabout management style laid down in the 1950s, by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, a style that still imbues the company today. But culture is a elusive concept. It¡¯s too soft to be managed. One executive asserted that ¡®the only culture round here is in the yoghurts in the canteen.¡¯ Nevertheless, though too soft to grasp, it¡¯s very real one. So many M&As have been botched for clashes between corporate cultures. It¡¯s real but too elusive to manage and grasp. Social capital is introduced to ground it on tangible material base. Then what is social capital? Social capital refers attributes like trust, commitment, attachment and so forth which belongs to active connections among people, in other word, network and community.
When the God decided to put a stop to human-being¡¯s first great collective enterprise, he confused their language so they could no longer understand one another, and could not carry out the joint project, Tower of Babel. Carry a heavy stone could be done without words. The real problem was the loss of understanding that cannot be mimed or diagrammed. Without common speech, the tower¡¯s planners could not have inspired others to join the project, workers could not have learned to trust each other¡¯s judgment, resolve unexpected problems together, or count on each other¡¯s help in dangerous situations. In other words, what they lost was not just common language, but the social capital which was probably more critical than the failure of information exchange.
Some schools in economics of organization characterized the firm as the flow of information. It¡¯s hard to deny. In this regard, however, corporate culture is no more than each company¡¯s idiosyncratic frame to each processing info: the firm is no more than a cybernetic system. But the firm is a social process built on community and network. Culture is what resides in community and network within personnel.
Moreover, organization¡¯s knowledge and capabilities lies not in official hierarchy but in unofficial community of practice. Most job training occurs after workers join a firm. They learn by dong on the shop floor. There is always a manual that describes how to operate a particular machine or conduct a job. As times passes, however, workers are apt to devise better ways to do the job and surpass the manual. And this is the collective process. As they work together, knowledge slowly moves from person to person. Network and community are not only the repository of corporate knowledge and capacities, but also the incubator of collaboration, especially voluntary collaboration that does not rely on external incentives. They help create and sustain our personal identities, the intrinsic satisfactions of praise, respect, and gratitude from fellow members. Those have more meaning and power than little prizes or even monetary rewards.
Now, I think, you¡¯ve got what is social capital. Above, I followed the style of the book which does not burden the reader with abstract concepts, but illustrate the picture of social capital with real world examples, to enlighten readers to the practical meaning of social capital in their own workplace. With closing the last page. I bet you get the crux and import of social capital.