Social Capital and Information Technology

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 426 pages
• Published by: The MIT Press June 18, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0262083310
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0262083317
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 1.6 pounds

Product Description
The concept of social capital, or the value that can be derived from social ties created by goodwill, mutual support, shared language, common beliefs, and a sense of mutual obligation, has been applied to a number of fields, from sociology to management. It is only lately, however, that researchers in information technology and knowledge management have begun to explore the idea of social capital in relation to their fields. This collection of thirteen essays by computer scientists, sociologists, communication specialists, economists, and others presents a multidisciplinary look at this particular intersection of information technology and social science and the need to adopt a sociotechnical perspective.

For the most part the contributors take a positive view of the interplay of social capital, knowledge sharing, and community building. Some essays look at specific instances, including the on-line and face-to-face relationships of a community of athletes, the building of social capital among Iranian NGOs, and the Internet-based communities created by the open-source movement, while others discuss more general ideas of civic and personal communities. The last four essays examine computer applications that augment social capital, including topic- and member-centered communications spaces such as the Expert Finder and the Loops system and virtual repositories of knowledge such as the Answer Garden and Pearls of Wisdom.

About The Author
Marleen Huysman is Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems, Marketing and Logistics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Vrije Unversiteit Amsterdam.

Volker Wulf is Associate Professor at the University of Siegen, Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, and Head of the International Institute for Socio-Informatics, Bonn.

Reader Reviews
Marleen Huysman and Volker Wulf have edited a nice book. I think it's the 1st book that links social capital and ICT in the foreground, altho many of us have also done stuff linking the 2 notions. Among the authors/articles are a good intro/review piece by the editors; Anita Blanchard on dispersed virtual communities and F2F social capital; Rob Cross and Steve Borgatti on informaiton flows in corporations; Charles Steinfeld on the (lack of) use of e-commerce in geographically defined business clusters; Mark Ackerman & Christine Halversman on new CSCW directions for social capital. And Anabel Quan-Haase and myself summarizing our research on how the internet may affect social capital in communities online and offline.