Growth aspirations and social capital: Young firms in a post-conflict environnment

We explore the social determinants of growth aspirations of young firms’ owners and managers in a post-conflict economy. We focus on social capital, which we treat as a multi-dimensional phenomenon, studying not only the effect of owners’ and managers’ personal networks on growth aspirations, but also other facets that facilitate cooperation such as trust in institutions and generalised trust in people. We posit that that the generalised trust amplifies the beneficial effects of personal business networks, explaining how this conclusion diverges from earlier literature. We argue that in a post-conflict country, preservation of ethnic diversity is indicative of tolerance and low communication barriers and social capital appropriable for entrepreneurship. Our empirical counterpart and hypotheses testing rely on survey of young businesses in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Civic engagement and corruption in 20 European democracies

This paper analyzes the relation between different forms of civic engagement and corruption. This first of all extends earlier analysis linking generalized trust to corruption by incorporating another element from the social capital complex (namely formal forms of civic engagement). Second, based on the idea that social networks' beneficial or harmful impact may depend on their characteristics, it investigates how the structure of social networks (i.e., inclusive vs. exclusive and isolated vs. connected) matters. Evaluating the engagement - corruption nexus for a cross-section of 20 European democracies in 2002/2003, we confirm that social networks are linked to corruption even when controlling for the effect of generalized trust, and that their relation to corruption is typespecific. These findings survive under various model specifications and robustness checks. --Corruption,civil society,networks,voluntary associations,European social survey

Social Networks, Interpersonal Trust, and Support for Democracy in East Asia

Civil society has been regard as a prerequisite for democracy, and social networks and interpersonal trust are two important elements of civil society. By using data from the Asian Barometer Survey, this study investigates the effects of social networks and interpersonal trust on public support for democracy in three East Asian democracies – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The results of statistical analysis show that social networks, rather than interpersonal trust, exert significant positive effects on public support for democracy in Japan and Taiwan. By contrast, it is interpersonal trust to affect public support for democracy in South Korea. Nonetheless, it should also be noted that trust in political institutions, democratic values, and education far outweigh social networks and interpersonal trust to impact public support for democracy in these East Asian democracies

Assessing trust through social capital? A possible experimental answer.

Trust is an important variable in economics, as several transactions are based on it; unfortunately it is difficult to measure. The recent economic literature on social capital shows a positive association between this concept and trust. As social capital is easier to measure than trust is, this paper analyzes the possibility of assessing trust measuring social capital using experimental economics. A basic trust game is played in three Western European countries with undergraduate students; a questionnaire measures their level of social capital, as time spent within social networks. This measure is stronger and more precise than the ones generally used. In particular this paper firstly measures social capital as the intensity of a membership to a voluntary organization, while the extant literature generally considers only the membership per se. Secondly the use of an experiment instead of a questionnaire allows for constructiong a measure of trust which is in principle continuous. Thirdly to play an experiment allows for observing the behaviour of the participants better than by the means of a survey. The results are supportive of the fact that trust can be assessed through social capital, although the presence of a strong geographical effect has to be accounted for.generalized trust, social capital, gender effect

A Detailed Dominant Data Mining Approach for Predictive Modeling of Social Networking Data using WEKA

Social network has gained popularity manifold in the last decade. Accessing social network sites such as Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn and Google+ through the internet and the web 2.0 technologies has become more affordable. People are becoming more interested in and relying on social network for information, news and opinion of other users on diverse subject matters. In this Paper, we present the first comprehensive review of social and computer science literature on trust in social networks. We first review the existing definitions of trust and define social trust in the context of social networks. Web-based social networks have become popular as a medium for disseminating information and connecting like-minded people. The public accessibility of such networks with the ability to share opinions, thoughts, information, and experience offers great promise to enterprises and governments. As the popularity increases and they became widely used as one of the important sources of news, people become more cautious about determining the trustworthiness of the information which is disseminating through social media for various reasons. For this reason, knowing the factors that influence the trust in social media content became very important. In this research paper, we use a survey as a mechanism to study trust in social networks. First, we prepared a questionnaire which focuses on measuring the ways in which social network users determine whether content is true or not and then we analyzed the response of individuals who participated in the survey and discuss the results in a focus group session. Then, the responses, we get from the survey and the focus group was used as a dataset for modeling trust, which incorporates factors that alter trust determination. The dataset preprocessing a total of 56 records were used for building the models. This Paper applies the Decision Tree, Bayesian Classifiers and Neural Network predictive data mining techniques in significant social media factors for predicting trust. To accomplish this goal: The WEKA data mining tool is used to evaluate the J48, Na�ve Bayes and Multilayer Perception algorithms with different experiments were made by performing adjustments of the attributes and using various numbers of attributes in order to come up with a purposeful output

A Detailed Dominant Data Mining Approach for Predictive Modeling of Social Networking Data using WEKA

Social network has gained popularity manifold in the last decade. Accessing social network sites such as Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn and Google+ through the internet and the web 2.0 technologies has become more affordable. People are becoming more interested in and relying on social network for information, news and opinion of other users on diverse subject matters. In this Paper, we present the first comprehensive review of social and computer science literature on trust in social networks. We first review the existing definitions of trust and define social trust in the context of social networks. Web-based social networks have become popular as a medium for disseminating information and connecting like-minded people. The public accessibility of such networks with the ability to share opinions, thoughts, information, and experience offers great promise to enterprises and governments. As the popularity increases and they became widely used as one of the important sources of news, people become more cautious about determining the trustworthiness of the information which is disseminating through social media for various reasons. For this reason, knowing the factors that influence the trust in social media content became very important. In this research paper, we use a survey as a mechanism to study trust in social networks. First, we prepared a questionnaire which focuses on measuring the ways in which social network users determine whether content is true or not and then we analyzed the response of individuals who participated in the survey and discuss the results in a focus group session. Then, the responses, we get from the survey and the focus group was used as a dataset for modeling trust, which incorporates factors that alter trust determination. The dataset preprocessing a total of 56 records were used for building the models. This Paper applies the Decision Tree, Bayesian Classifiers and Neural Network predictive data mining techniques in significant social media factors for predicting trust. To accomplish this goal: The WEKA data mining tool is used to evaluate the J48, Naïve Bayes and Multilayer Perception algorithms with different experiments were made by performing adjustments of the attributes and using various numbers of attributes in order to come up with a purposeful output

Risk, Trust and Emergent Groups: COVID-19 Mutual Aid Networks

Throughout the world, thousands of local mutual aid networks (MANs) have emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mutual aid involves exchanging resources, connecting people to services and building community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid includes sharing COVID-19 information, social support, food and emergency funds in informal local networks. To learn more about these community networks and explore the perspectives and experiences of MAN participants around the United States, I conducted survey research. There are 101 individuals from 16 MANs in 11 states included in the survey sample. There are two parts to this research. The first explores descriptive characteristics of MAN participants and their network involvement. The survey results describe demographic characteristics of MAN participant demographic characteristics, types of MAN involvement and motivations for joining MANs. The second part of this research analyzes social trust, institutional trust and COVID-19 risk perception. Survey findings suggest that MAN participants have high social trust, high institutional trust and low COVID-19 risk perception when compared to overall U.S. population survey data (Dryhurst et al. 2020; NORC1 N.d.). Results from this research provide insight on local community networks that develop in the midst of crises and contribute to a growing body of COVID-19 mutual aid research

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraq

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraqis Jon Gresham, Farouk Saleh, Shara Majid June 2006 With appreciation to the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies for initiating the Second World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, this paper summarizes findings on homogeneity in community-level social groups derived from inter-ethnic research conducted during 2005 among Iraqi Arabs and Kurds living in the city of Basra, Iraq, and in the Netherlands. We found that perceptions towards out-groups were not based on religion, ethnicity, class, or location as in traditional individual-focused social networks. Patterns of perception towards out-groups seemed to be rooted in homogeneous social sub-groups with combinations of these factors. This research project used a 192-item survey of two hundred Iraqi business owners and managers in Iraq and in the Netherlands. It measured homogeneity of social group memberships. Survey elements included items drawn from the World Values Surveys (Inglehart), the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (Roper Center), and the Social Capital Inventory (Narayan and Cassidy). Homogeneity, relationship segregation, social trust, and community influence in social networks were estimated through indices reflecting components of social relationships in priority in-groups emerging from factor analysis of survey responses. Other indices included civic participation (socialization), perceptions of threat from out-groups, ethnic and religious identity, social trust, personal security, and contribution to community-based resources. Uniformity of responses to certain items about out-groups corresponded to findings by other authors on segregation and membership in social networks (Burt 1997, Buskins 2005, Inglehart 2004, Narayan and Cassidy 2001, Putnam 1995). This work was an expansion on a study on perceptions of threat from out-groups among Iraqis in five locations conducted in 2003 (Gresham 2004). This paper presents the following major sections: I. Introduction II. Purpose III. Background IV. Methodology V. Results VI. Reporting Process VII. Conclusions VIII. Further Work IX. Appendix X. End Notes *Jon Gresham, European Research Centre On Migration & Ethnic Relations, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Farouk Saleh, University of Tilburg, Netherlands Shara Majid, Erasmus University, Netherlands See other reports at: http://www.CivilSocietyIraq.seedwiki.co

From social network to firm performance: The mediating effect of trust, selling capability and pricing capability

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a structural equation model to explain the complex relationship between social network and firm performance by introducing the mediating role of trust, selling capability and pricing capability. Design/methodology/approach – The research model with hypothesis development was derived based on the literature. To provide empirical evidence, this study carried out a survey in which the data were equated with a list of questionnaires with a random survey of 380 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Indonesian context. Findings – This study indicates that the use of social media in management process will not affect the increasing firm performance unless the firms build trust upon social networks. The social network with trust allows the firms to gain a pricing capability and a selling capability, which brings a positive impact on firm performance. The results also show that the selling and the pricing capabilities become essential following the utilizing the social media, which concerns on trust building. Research limitations/implications – This study focused on the small-to-medium context, which has conventionally provided an exemplary site for the development of social capital theory but raises issues of generalizability across different contexts. Practical implications – For the managers, it is advisable to encourage their employees to consciously exploit the selling capability by enhancing the business networks via social media to achieve the firm performance. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the social capital theory by explaining the mediating role of trust in the complex relationship between social network and firm performance. This study provides evidence that trust plays a pivotal role in social networks, which enable the observed firms to achieve the performance

Social Capital in Rural China: Its Impact on Economic Development, Grassroots Governance, and Democratic Participation

Does social capital generate positive influences on economic development and democratic governance? This question has important theoretical and policy implications for the contemporary world, especially for the developing countries. The primary goals of this study are to investigate the stock of two types of social capital—bridging social capital and bonding social capital—in rural China, and furthermore to examine the impacts of these two types of social capital upon economic development, grassroots governance, and democratic participation in rural China. In this study bridging social capital has been measured by the participation in inclusive social networks and general trust among villagers, and bonding social capital has been measured by the participation in exclusive social networks (the clan organizations) and parochial trust among villagers. In terms of the stock of social capital, this study has found that: (1) the traditional, bonding social capital still has a very solid foundation in rural China; (2) the modern, bridging social capital is in formation in rural China, even though the stock of this type of social capital is very moderate. Case studies as well as a series of statistical analyses are applied to assess the impacts of different types of social capital. Based on a nation-wide survey of 410 villages in rural China, this study has indicated that both subjective norms and objective networks of the bridging social capital—the general trust and participation in inclusive social networks—have a significant and positive impact on economic development, grassroots governance, and democratic participation in rural China. However, both subjective norms and objective networks of the bonding social capital—the parochial trust and participation in exclusive networks (the clan organizations)—generate negative impacts on such domains