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XXVII CONFERENZA ITALIANA DI SCIENZE REGIONALI
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL ON KNOWLEDGE SHARING: A
FRAMEWORK FOR PARTICIPATIVE PLANNING – ORIENTED ANALYSIS
Guido SECHI1, Viesturs CELMINS2 and Uldis SPURINS3
1 Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Bari, Via G. Orabona 4, 70125 Bari (Italy)
2 Laboratory of Analytic and Strategic Studies, Ausekla iela 1-12, 1010 – LV Riga (Latvia)
3 Economics Department, Fordham University, 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx NY 10458, New York (USA);
Laboratory of Analytic and Strategic Studies, Ausekla iela 1-12, 1010-LV Riga (Latvia)
ABSTRACT
The concept of “social capital” has been spreading in the last years in planning studies, in
order to define and quantify the relationships between individuals (or groups and
organisations) which can bring to an increase of public value in community contexts.
However, such a field of analysis is still in need of improvements in both terminological and
methodological terms. In particular, very few attempts have been made in order to classify the
single dimensions of social capital with regard to its supposed benefits, in particular to the
sharing of knowledge, which is widely considered as one of the main ‘public value’
components. This paper is aimed at providing a conceptual attempt at a cognitive – based
classification of social capital, inspired by Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s work (1998), and by a
reflection on the dimensions of transmittable knowledge, identified on the basis of
organisational and knowledge management literature, and on the barriers which affect sharing
processes. The paper is aimed at providing a conceptual framework and some guidelines
which might be helpful in order to define and implement planning and development strategies
based on a participative and inclusive approach and able to exploit the capacity that social
connections can have in supporting virtuous processes.
1. INTRODUCTION
Historical events and economic conjunctures have led to question the role of planning in the
last decades. While neo - liberal theorists and governments have expressed a rejection of the
concept itself, some progressive scholars have concentrated on a revision of the concept of
traditional planning which leads to an equally challenging, but almost opposite (both in its
premises and implications) view of planning theory and practice. The key concept of such a
view lies, basically, in a shift from the ‘positivist’ view of the technical practice of planning
(the adhesion to which, according to some of these authors, is paradoxically shared by neo keynesian, marxist and neo - liberal approaches to planning), to an approach in which
‘planning is less and less about technical matters and more about the critical appreciation and
appropriation of ideas’ (J. Friedmann, in Davoudi, 2000, p. 12). This approach has its
antecedents, on one hand, in some fundamental works which have tried to bridge planning
and organisational science by focusing on the cognitive aspects of planning more than on the
technical ones, namely the work of D. Schon (1983) and J. Forrester (1989); on the other
hand, on social science - related reflections on power determinants in the post-industrial age
and consensus building, such as A. Giddens’ (1984) (and once more J. Forrester’s). It is
possible to summarize the output of these threads, with regard to planning theory and practice,
by saying that they converge in supporting an inclusive and participative support to planning,
with three different but logically connected aims: the first, of a social nature, consists in a
broadening of the stakeholder spectrum in order to include in the consulting process also the
least powerful and vocal groups of interest; the second is a political one and relates to the
growing demand for transparency in planning process, coming from the civil society; the third
one, probably the most interesting with regard to its scientific implications, consists in the
involvement of all stakeholders in the process, in order to exploit the possible contribution of
everybody’s knowledge to problem solving and to build a real consensus. It is understood,
how the key aspects of this process consist in the handling of two factors, namely the links
and connections between stakeholder groups, and the types of knowledge which can be
exchanged by means of such linkages of different kinds, which in organisational science go
under the name of social capital. However, such aspects, which are quite common in
organisational science studies, are very seldom examined with regard to the planning sphere.
This paper is a pilot work, aimed at contributing to fill such a gap, stemming from a crossanalysis of different threads of literature and trying to define a framework and to provide
some empirical quantitative evidence of the relationship between social capital and
knowledge sharing.
2. THE SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL IMPLICATIONS OF PARTICIPATIVE
PLANNING: SHARED KNOWLEDGE AND SHARED CONSENSUS
The neo - liberal response to the transparency and simplification demand related to planning
activities consists in a criteria – driven approach where all planning activities are devolved to
agencies which operate in conformity with strictly defined goals, on one hand reducing
traditional bureaucratic constraints, but on the other hand providing a short sighted view of
people’s interests and behaviour while basically proposing a traditional top-down, elite-based
approach to planning (Healey, 1997). Besides, this approach which is now dominant in the
Western world overlooks, if not justifies in ideological terms (Davoudi and Atkinson, 1999),
the issue of emarginated stakeholders.
But, if a modern conception of planning activity cannot rely only on the application of
scientific knowledge to practice, given the limits of the planner’s rationality and the existence
of crucial technical knowledge which stems from contextual, in-action experience (Schon,
1983), than such an approach is debatable in terms of efficiency, besides any ideological and
moral considerations. In other words, a participative approach which could include a broader
set of stakeholders in the planning strategy building process, where the planner does not act as
a traditional ‘expert’ anymore, but as a ‘reflexive practitioner’ – to use Schon’s words, would
be useful in order to complete the planner’s knowledge of the issues to deal with by a process
of mutual learning, both warranting access to social non-expert knowledge (Borri et al., 2005;
Borri et al., 2006) otherwise unreachable, and providing a powerful tool to social consensus
building.
3. THE DIMENSIONS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE NATURE OF SHAREABLE
KNOWLEDGE
The above discussed issue – that is, the definition of a participative planning approach based
on the recognition of knowledge contributions coming from all stakeholders, leads to another
conceptual issue, which is, the way through which such knowledge can be made available to
decision makers, in order to make planning decisions more effective and more fair at the same
time. Knowledge management literature has since long dealt with the issue of knowledge
sharing, but usually with regard to a fairly different context, which is, the processes through
which knowledge is appropriated, enriched and exploited in order to enable economical and
technological innovation. However, a connection between economics related studies and
planning studies with regard to knowledge sharing can be found in a very transversal concept,
that is, social capital. Such a concept has been elaborated by sociologists and economists as
well (cit. Granovetter, 1973; Bourdieu, 1983; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1993), and used in a
wide range of contexts, from innovation management to regional economy, from social
sciences to medical studies, although, meaningfully, its origins are to be found, according to
many, in the thought of an urbanist such as J. Jacobs (1961). With regard to the economics
perspective, social capital is one of the possible dimensions of an organisation’s capital, and
consequently one of the determinants of productivity and competitive advantage. One of the
ways in which social capital affects productivity consists in making it easier for the
organisation to gain access to external sources of knowledge. In a more general sense, social
capital can be defined as a set of linkages and connections, of a more or less tangible and
formal kind, which can be useful to a single person or a group of people for the access to
external resources, of which knowledge is one of the main: to use a definition which is due to
J. Buchanan (1965), such linkages allow those who possess them to share ‘club goods’
otherwise not accessible; and, actually, many types of knowledge can be included in this set
of goods (Capello, 1999; Breschi and Lissoni, 2001), in particular when the nature of
knowledge is:
 tacit and context – specific;
 codified.
In this sense, the building and exploitation of social capital in order to share knowledge can
be seen as one of the possible ways to accomplish the goals of a cognitive-based and
participative planning strategy. In such a perspective, it is crucial to define conceptually and
empirically which kinds of social capital exist and how they relate to knowledge sharing.
3.1 The dimensions of social capital and knowledge sharing
As mentioned above, the concept of social capital has been utilized in different contexts and
with regard to different perspectives. With regard to the perspective, it has been classified and
measured as a collective resource of communities in social studies (Putnam, 1993), and as an
organisation - owned resource in economic competitiveness – related studies, under the
influence of authors stressing, in the last decades, the crucial importance for economic
competitiveness of soft, intangible resources (Grant, 1996; Edvinsson and Malone, 1997)
The first issue consists in the definition of the analysis unit, that is, the level of aggregation at
which the analysis is meant to be carried on. In literature three levels have been defined
(Chou, 2006):
 Micro level (relations between individuals, or households);
 Meso level (relations between organisations, groups of individuals);
 Macro level (relations between institutional powers).
Of course, the choice of the level depends on the aim of the analysis. It must be said,
however, that multi – level analysis can be necessary when examining social capital benefits
(Subramanian et al., 2002); and this necessity is even stronger in a participative planning
context, where the interactions between different networks need to be taken into account
(Healey, 2006).
The second issue relates to the ‘embeddedness’ degree of social capital. A widely accepted
distinction which is made in literature on social capital distinguishes between a bonding and
bridging component: the first is the set of connections which embed an actor within the
community, the second is the set of connections which allow the actor to keep contact with
other actors which are external to the community (Putnam, 2000). An alternative analogue
formulation which dates back to Granovetter (1973) and which has become very popular
(Uzzi, 1997, 2008; Hansen, 1999) distinguishes between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ ties and
identifies in the first those who can help to gain resources which are external to the actor’s
community. In this sense, the nature of social capital can be seen in different terms: it is a
collective resource when it is internal to a community, but its bridging dimension is actually a
private good, which allows the owner to gain external goods (Adler and Kwon, 2002). A third
dimension, linking social capital, introduced by Woolcock (2001), summarizes hierarchical
(vertical) community relationships, underlining the relational complexity of social capital.
The third and last issue consists in the different nature of the dimensions which constitute
social capital. With regard to this, scholars have identified different typologies of
‘relationships’ between entities, which can include attitudes, values, and formal cooperation
bonds. A first classification distinguishes between a structural and a cognitive component
(Grootaert and Van Bastelaer, 2002; Chou, 2006; Mitchell and Bossert, 2007), that is,
between a set of regulated networks, based on the formal acknowledgement of established
roles, and a set of informal linkages based on the sharing of values and norms, and on mutual
trust. This approach stems directly from the most popular definitions of the concept itself, in
particular Putnam’s.
A more subtle attempt was proposed by Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) and has probably
become the most influent in organisational science – related social capital studies in the last
decade. The originality of such an approach lies in its cognitive approach, that is, the idea of
defining the dimensions of social capital with regard to the nature of resources of which social
capital enables the sharing, which are identified, in particular, in knowledge - related
resources (intellectual capital), and to the conditions which can enable the sharing process. In
particular, the approach identifies four necessary conditions (accessibility, anticipation,
motivation, and capability), and on this basis defines three categories of social capital: a
structural dimension, which includes formal networks and their features (configuration and
degree of appropriability); a cognitive dimension, which relates to common cultural decoding
tools between actors (shared language, codes, narratives, goals); a relational one, which
relates to common values (norms, trust, identification): the structural dimension mainly
enables the accessibility condition, the cognitive one enables capability, and the relational one
enables motivation; all the three dimensions contribute to the anticipation condition.
Another contribution in this direction has been provided by Adler and Kwon (2002) who have
poignantly renamed the three components identified by Nahapiet and Ghoshal with regard to
their respective function in enabling knowledge sharing: opportunity, with regard to the
structural dimension; ability, with regard to the cognitive one; and motivation, with regard to
the relational one. Levin and Cross (2004), also investigating in a cognitive perspective, seem
to take into account both works influenced by the structural-cognitive dichotomy and
Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s model: here the ‘relational’ dimension is divided into two
components – a ‘benevolent trust’ one and a ‘cognitive trust’ one.
All these conceptual contributions, however, seem to be affected by a serious drawback,
which is to some extent acknowledged by Nahapiet and Ghoshal, and by Inkpen and Tseng
(2005). Such authors point out how different dimensions of social capital may enable the
sharing of different kinds of knowledge (“Different knowledge types have different effects on
organizational processes [...].In future research scholars may examine how social capital
dimensions affect the transfer of different knowledge types”, Inkpen and Tsang, p. 162).
Actually, any reflection on this correlation is virtually absent, at the moment, in social capital
- oriented knowledge management related studies: in spite of an ongoing debate on the ‘nature
of knowledge’, when measuring the impact of social capital on knowledge transfer, scholars
seem to consider knowledge as a monolithic concept. The definition of a framework for an
investigation of the cognitive benefits of social capital, able to take into account the
complexity of cognitive resources, is the main aim of this paper.
3.2 Types of (transferable) knowledge
The definition of the nature of knowledge is the main concern of the branch of philosophy
which is named epistemology. What is important in the context of this paper, in particular, is
a reflection on the types of knowledge with regard to its transferability, as it has been
developed, mainly, in knowledge management studies.
The most popular and influencing conceptual dichotomy is the one between tacit and explicit
knowledge, as defined by Polanyi (1967), and developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) in
the context of organizational learning studies, that is, between an internalized, non codified,
often subconscious, and therefore hard to transfer, form, and a codified, conscious, and
therefore transmittable one. In order to be made shareable by the whole organisation, tacit
knowledge must be made explicit; the main technique in order to enhance such a process
consists in helping tacit knowledge being made explicit by means of a process consisting in
socialization and externalization phases. This dichotomy, therefore, classifies knowledge with
regard to the explicitness dimension.
Many knowledge management studies, in particular in the context of industrial and regional
economics, with regard to territorial innovation dynamics, emphasize the distinction between
two forms of inter-organisational shareable knowledge which are crucial for innovation-based
competitiveness: a local kind of knowledge, basically procedural and experience-based,
created and shared by the interaction of local engineers and workers (‘communities of
practice’), and a global knowledge, of a scientific kind, which is created by means of global
networking between scientific communities (‘epistemic communities’) (Coenen et al., 2004).
This dichotomy introduces the dimension of embeddedness.
Other works define different types of knowledge with regard to its degree of elaboration.
Kogut and Zander (1992), in the context of inter-firm transfer, distinguish between
information and know – how, which means, in their words, to distinguish between declarative
and procedural knowledge, that is, between knowing what something means and knowing
how to do something; but also, between knowledge which can be learnt by description and
knowledge which can be learnt through direct experience (which echoes the distinction
conceptualized in the epistemic work of B. Russell between ‘knowledge by description’ and
‘knowledge by acquaintance’(1911)). This leads back to the work of Polanyj and Nonaka /
Takeuchi: the distinction between a knowledge which can be transmitted and decoded, and a
knowledge which must be experienced since it is mainly tacit and very difficult to codify.
This classification is used in the few works which try to measure transferable knowledge in
inter -organisational social capital related studies (e.g. Weber and Weber, 2007).
Lane and Lubatkin (1998) identify a distinction of three forms of inter-organisational
transferable knowledge: know-what (scientific knowledge), know-how (knowledge –
processing systems), and know-why (dominant logics).
A combination and enrichment of these classifications can be found in Gorman (2002), who
identifies four types of transferable knowledge:
 Declarative (what);
 Procedural (how);
 Judgement (when)
 Wisdom (why).
The first two forms correspond, basically, to information and know-how as defined by Kogut
and Zander and others. With the last two, the author underlines, next to information and
procedure, of conceptual forms of knowledge. In Gorman’s framework, the components of
knowledge are identified along two dimensions: the distinction between tacit and explicit
knowledge is transversal with regard to the degree of data elaboration. This may lead back
again to the work of Nonaka (1994), where, before distinguishing between tacit and explicit
knowledge, he points out the distinction between information (flow of messages) and
knowledge (information – sustained belief).
A further insight in this direction is provided by Blackler (1995) who distinguishes between
five types:
 Embrained knowledge, of a conceptual kind;
 Embodied knowledge, tacit, action - oriented;
 Encultured knowledge, gained through mutual understanding and socialization;
 Embedded knowledge, explicit and embodied into systematic routines;
 Encoded knowledge, embodied in signs, symbols and codes.
Antonelli (2006, etc), investigating the governance forms for enhancing territorial knowledge
combination, defines features of knowledge which can be obstacles for the efficiency of its
transmission: tacitness, indivisibility, complementarity and appropriability
4. THE FORMS OF TRANSFERABLE KNOWLEDGE AND THE FORMS OF
TRANSFER – ENABLING SOCIAL CAPITAL: A FRAMEWORK
In participative planning contexts, as stated above, the main cognitive issue relates to the
appropriability of knowledge by means of sharing practices. Therefore, a reflection aimed at
providing guidelines for the assessment of the role of different forms of social capital in
enhancing such a process, may benefit from the identification of the existing barriers to such a
transferability. Some of these barriers are external to the nature of knowledge, and relate
much more to the efficiency of sharing links, some others are instead descending from the
nature of knowledge itself. In order to identify such barriers in particular, it can be useful to
summarize which are the main kinds of knowledge that are pointed out by knowledge
management literature, and to reflect on the way through which they can be transferred.
 A form of knowledge, which can be better defined as ‘information’ (Gorman, 2002),
that relates to information about the sources of organized data, which are usually in an
explicit and non-coded form, but can be secret or hard to find. It has been defined as
‘know-who’ and ‘know-what’ in organisational learning literature.
 A procedural form of knowledge, based on personal empirical experience and in
particular on the practical solution of contextual problems, which needs to be
externalized (i. e. made explicit) in order to be transmitted. It can be related to the
‘reflection-in-action’ theorized by D. Schon, and to ‘know – how’ in industrial and
regional economics literature.
 A form of knowledge, which can be defined of a conceptual kind, based on the
reflection on empirical experience and on theoretical speculation, that is, a set of
explicit codes and general rules, which can be internalized in tacit forms by
individuals. These codes and rules must be understandable to external actors in order
for them to gain this knowledge from the actor who owns it. It can be related to knowwhen plus know-why (judgement plus wisdom) in Gorman’s framework (2002).
From the analysis of such forms of knowledge emerge the following possible barriers to
transfer:
 Non - accessibility. Knowledge may be explicit and understandable, but not open to
everyone’s access (e.g. it may be secret, or it may not be easy to know where it is
located);
 Tacitness. Knowledge is not expressed in formal codes, or it is hard for it to be
translated into formal codes;
 Codification. Knowledge is expressed in formal codes, but such codes are
understandable only to a limited number of people (e.g. a specific technical or
scientific language). This is probably the most overlooked barrier in knowledge
transfer – related studies, since it is overshadowed by the tacitness / explicitness
dichotomy.
.Hansen (1997) links forms of social capital with knowledge transfer by associating weak
(formal) ties with high search benefits and strong (relational) ties with high transfer
effectiveness. Levin and Cross (2004) empirically identify a positive correlation between
strong ties and acquisition of useful knowledge, as well as between competence - based trust
(cognitive social capital) and the transfer of tacit knowledge. On the basis of Nahapiet and
Ghoshal’s framework and reflections on transfer barriers, it is possible to identify a cognitiveoriented classification of social capital into the following dimensions, which basically
correspond to those identified by Nahapiet and Ghoshal:
 A structural-formal dimension, i.e. the set of the actor’s formal relationships, that is,
the set of connections which can enable the access to otherwise hidden information
(search);
 A relational, benevolence-related dimension, which is a measure of mutual trust and
sense of belonging that enables the direct contact which is necessary for the access to
tacit knowledge;
 An epistemic-cognitive, competence-related dimension, which is a measure of the
extent to which the actor shares with other actors procedural and conceptual codes and
rules, that allows the actor to interpret accessible knowledge when it is expressed in
coded forms. Epistemic social capital can be seen, at the meso level, as the expression
of ‘relative absorptive capacity’ of interacting organisations or groups (Lane and
Lubatkin, 1998; Upadhyayula and Kumar, 2004). It may descend both from speculative
sources (scientific knowledge) or from the generalization of procedures.
The proposed classification can be examined from the point of view of the other issues which
affect social capital assessment. As for the embeddedness dichotomy, it seems to suffer from
one single ambiguity, that is, the vagueness of the concept of community. Actually, the theory
on global and local knowledge (which identifies the first as produced by ‘epistemic
communities’ and the second as produced by ‘communities of practice’) reminds how a
community may be defined in territorial / relational (geographical proximity, common values,
sense of belonging), and epistemic (common scientific / technical language, common
knowledge base) terms. Coming back to the above classification, the cognitive dimension has
therefore bridging potentialities with regard to territorial constraints, but it has mainly a
bonding nature with regard to epistemic constraints; the relational dimension is usually a
bonding dimension with regard to territorial constraints; the structural dimension can acquire
bridging or bonding features with regard to the context.
With regard to the level of analysis, it is possible to say is that the three levels of social capital
– and the three forms of transferable knowledge - are transversal with regard to the size of
actors examined, but in general it is possible to expect a higher relevance of formal ties
(structural capital) at a higher level of aggregation, and a higher relevance of relational capital
(together with the exchange of procedural knowledge) in interpersonal relations.
The considerations and classifications discussed in this chapter are summarized in the
following tables.
Table 1: Types of shareable knowledge
Type
knowledge
of Alternate
denomination
Barriers to transfer
Non-accessibility
Tacitness
Coding
degree
Information
Know-who, know-what
Depending on the Usually
Usually low
context
low
Usually low
High
High
Usually
High
Procedural
Know-how
Conceptual
Know-why, know-when Usually low
low
Table 2: A cognitive-oriented classification of social capital
Social capital dimensions
Embeddedness
Related
barrier
Structural - formal
Depending on the context
Nonaccessibility
Relational (benevolence)
Cognitive
(competence)
–
Bonding
epistemic Bridging
Tacitness
(geographical
–
relational Coding degree
community)
Bonding (epistemic community)
5. THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND TRANSFERABLE
KNOWLEDGE DIMENSIONS: CONSIDERATIONS AND POSSIBLE GUIDELINES
In literature, the measurement of social capital is usually depending on the scope of the
analysis (whether the study concerns the assessment of communities’ collective resources, or
adopts an organisational resource assessment perspective), and on the definition of the
dimensions and the analysis level. In intellectual capital studies, which investigate the
assessment of organizational intangible assets, the concept of social capital is expressed in
terms of partnerships and good relationships with external actors (Subramaniam and Youndt,
2005). The traditional distinction between ‘structural’ and ‘cognitive’ capital has led, in social
and planning studies, to analyses based on a community oriented perspective, carried on
mainly by means of data collection at the individual or household level which are later
aggregated, where structural capital is measured in terms of membership of organisations and
cognitive capital in terms of trust, usually by means of psychometric scales in order to
measure the most subjective variables (e.g. Mitchell and Bossert, 2007). Scholars who use the
concept in sustainable development contexts add to this scheme measurements of proactive
relational parameters like goodwill and attitude towards cooperation (e.g. Krishna, 2004).
Presutti et al. (2007) test Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s framework in the context of firm knowledge
acquisition by measuring both independent variables (the three dimensions of social capital)
and dependent ones (knowledge acquisition) at the organisational level, by means of
psychometric scales aimed at measuring the intensity of formal and informal contacts and
their effectiveness according to the actors’ perceptions. Capello and Faggian (2005), basing
their analysis on previous conceptual works by Camagni (1991) and Capello (2002), study the
dynamics of innovation-enabling collective learning in territorial industrial systems, by
investigating the correlation between proactive social capital (defined ‘relational capital’) and
knowledge enrichment. In this work, relational capital is evaluated by means of measures of
cooperation and workforce mobility between firms; knowledge enrichment is measured by its
effects (innovative performance). Howells (2002), drawing on previous knowledge
management studies, distinguishes between formal and informal modes of knowledge
transfer. The first include contracts and collaborations, the second relate to informal meetings
and common membership in lobby groups, agencies, professional associations.
Guidelines for the measurement of social capital and knowledge enrichment in planning
contexts are provided by Khakee (2004). In this perspective (which focuses on macro, or
institutional social capital), the approach is community-oriented and tends to emphasize the
use of qualitative parameters and criteria, by highlighting the description of specific and
contextual processes and the quality in terms of enrichment and inclusiveness. Actually, an
attempt at purely quantitative analysis seems to be fanciful and limited at the same time,
because it runs the risks of presenting as globally ‘objective’ measures which descend from
subjective and contextual information, and also overlooks the spatial and qualitative
dimensions (extent and effectiveness) which are crucial at least in participative planningoriented studies. A mix of quantitative correlations between psychometric measures, spatial –
relational network analysis techniques and qualitative description of processes seems to be the
most realistic way to gain information from empirical analysis about the issue discussed in
this paper.
In order to investigate, to some extent, quantitative correlation between social capital
dimensions and knowledge sharing, an approach based on the stakeholder group (or
organisation) as the analysis unit seems to be the most adequate. In the following tables some
evaluation criteria for both social capital dimensions and knowledge sharing, in a generic
planning context, are proposed. The former are meant to be measured, when possible, at the
inter – group (organisational) level, or otherwise by aggregating data collected at the
individual level (subjective criteria must be necessarily collected this way). The latter are
instead meant to be measured both at the inter-organisational and inter-institutional level;
once again, the most subjective measures must be necessarily aggregated as average of data
collected at the individual level.
Table 3: Evaluation criteria for social capital dimensions
Social
capital Evaluation criteria
dimension
Objectively quantifiable
Subjective (quantifiable by means of
psychometric scales)
Structural
-Number
of
formal -Perceived quality of relationships and
relationships
(formal meetings
agreement and cooperation)
-Intensity
of
(average
of
individual
evaluations)
formal
relationships (frequency of
official
meetings
and
contacts)
Relational
-
Common
goals
degree - Trust (amount of members who trust each
(amount of members in the other)
same political organisation /
pressure group / lobby)
-
Intensity
relationships
of
informal
(average
of
individual informal meetings
and contacts)
Cognitive
-Common vision / ideology
(amount of members with
present or past affiliation or
membership to similar or
same organisation)
-Common
background
cultural
(amount
of
members
with
same
educational
background
membership
in
the
professional association)
/
same
Table 4: evaluation criteria for knowledge sharing
Knowledge
Evaluation criteria
sharing
Objectively quantifiable
Subjective
(quantifiable
by
means
of
psychometric scales)
Information
Intensity and range of access Degree of shared consensus (average measure
to external info archives
of agreement about contingent planning
criteria)
Procedural
Number
/
frequency
of
cooperative innovative ad
hoc practices
Conceptual
Number
/
cooperative
frequency
of Degree of shared consensus (average measure
innovative of agreement about long-term priorities and
processes
planning criteria)
Degree of understanding / assimilation of
other actors’ priorities (average measure of
psychometric evaluation)
6. CONCLUSIONS
As said above, the present paper is meant to be a preliminary reflection aimed at providing a
conceptual framework and some guidelines for an investigation of cognitive – related benefits
of social capital, which could in its turn become a powerful tool for participative planning
practices based on the empowering of knowledge sharing processes. However, the paper has a
few limits. The first one descends – naturally - from its conceptual and general approach,
which needs to be tested not only in order to verify hypothesized correlations and dynamics,
but also in order to enrich the conceptual framework and guidelines by means of direct
contextual experience – which is a necessary factor in planning studies meant as being careful
to the contextual factors as action criteria. Empirical analyses of a quantitative and qualitative
kind, based on the proposed framework, and applied to specific planning and geographical
contexts, will be carried on in future papers.
The other main limits is, to some extent, linked to the first one.. It consists in the
simplification of the analysis level when it comes to the definition of evaluation guidelines.
This leads not to address the issues connected to the relational complexity of social capital
and knowledge sharing-related dynamics – in planning contexts in particular. It is likely that
empirical analysis will provide hints and indications with regard to this issue; however, it
must be said that further conceptual reflection is required in order to take into account
different levels of analysis (from the individual to the institutional one) with regard to these
dynamics.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thank goes to Prof. Abdul Khakee of Royal Institute of Technology for his precious
advices and stimulating questions in the course of the process. The authors would also like to
thank Prof. Dino Borri and Prof. Pierpaolo Pontrandolfo (Politecnico di Bari) and Prof.
Roberts Kilis (Stockholm School of Economics in Riga) for their extremely useful hints.
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