PR 660 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Social Capital

• School: Ball State University
• Department: Public Relations
• Course: PR 660
• Professor: Becky McDonald

Document Summary

Social capital theory shows promise in explaining how public affairs work. It considers relationships created by people involved in groups. This has promise for public affair theory because it gives more specificity to how individuals in organizations build relationships to lead to decision-making overall. This theory moves away from rational models of decision-making focusing on logical/outcomes of fact. Social capital comes through to social structures that create exchanges of communication. These exchanges involve people, groups, organizations, cultures, nations, etc. This produces a shift in the creation of relationships, maintenance, and dissolution forming the successful framework for the activity for an organization. With these exchanges of communication, there are social relationships which can be led to financial capital. Participants in social networks build obligations/expectations that is spent on accomplishing all your goals and objectives in an organization. There are five dimensions to structures in an organization that allow relationships: the first is a system of network connections.