Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 8, 1997

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting

Ebbets Field and the Emergence of Social Capital
Social Capital Networks in Business and Society

Social capital and social networks explain the benefits and structure of patterns of social interaction among a number of actors. Integrating these concepts can explain how a business organization can provide the basis for reciprocal exchange among a number of actors, as well as the basis for civic engagement In the community as a whole. A business organization can generate these effects when it becomes the focal actor in a particular pattern of social interaction. We call this pattem for reciprocal exchange and civic engagement that arises around a focal actor - a social capital network. This analysis is applied to identify and explain how a network of reciprocity and civic engagement arose in Brooklyn during the 1930s-1950s around the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team and its ballpark, Ebbets Field.