Social cooperatives,social welfare associations and social networks

We use an original data-set to study how participation in two types of non-profit organizations – i.e. social welfare associations and social cooperatives – affects individual social capital, understood as a network of cooperative relationships. Participation in both the types of organization allows members to start new social relations. However, social welfare associations seem to play a significantly greater role in the development of volunteers’ social capital, favouring the creation of weak ties that are used to exchange information and advice, and offering the opportunity to establish stronger ties entailing concrete mutual support. Within social cooperatives, workers appear to develop their individual social capital to a greater extent than volunteers. Our results suggest that the composition of the workforce, the depth of members’ involvement in the organization’s activities and the human resources strategies adopted by the management influence the creation of cooperative relations through on-the-job interactions.     

非公有资本进入我国卫生领域的理论与实践

2005年初,国务院3号文件明确规定,放宽非公有制经济市场准入,允许非公有资本进入社会事业领域,支持、引导和规范非公有资本投资教育、科研、卫生、文化、体育等社会事业的非营利性和营利性领域。我国目前正经历一个“国退民进”的过程。公有资本与非公有资本的边界怎样划分一直是理论界研究和争论的焦点。该研究从公有资本和非公有资本的本质属性出发,通过政策回顾和文献检索,分析了非公有资本进入各行业的理论与实践;通过学习、借鉴非公有资本进入卫生领域的国际经验,对其进入我国卫生领域的总量、结构、形式等做了相对客观的总结和评价。     

非营利组织社会资本对其筹资的影响

解释了非营利组织的社会资本对其筹资的影响。首先介绍了非营利组织概念的产生和界定以及其组织分类及标准;然后对有关社会资本的概念产生过程和测量的研究文献进行了回顾,进而讨论了非营利组织社会资本的测量方法、影响变量;最后利用我国14家非营利组织的相关数据,实证分析了其社会资本对收入差异的影响。     

In absence of money: a field experiment on volunteer work motivation

Although volunteers are a critical resource for non-profit organizations, little is known about how best to motivate them to work. A non-profit organization asked episodic volunteers to produce handmade greeting cards to sell at a fundraising event. By running a natural field experiment, we study the effect of motivating these volunteers through (a) the opportunity to vote on how the money that was raised would be spent and (b) the prospect of individual performance feedback. We find an economically and statistically significant positive effect of both tools on the quantity of work done, while the quality is mostly unaffected. Moreover, we observe significant gender differences in responsiveness to the treatments. While the prospect for feedback is more motivating to men, women respond more strongly to the opportunity to decide how the money would be spent. Empowerment seems to be a simple way to increase engagement for people with low enjoyment.

     

企业能力还是企业社会资本——企业捐赠的影响因素

企业是中国慈善事业的主体。以往的研究多从经济学视角探寻企业能力对企业捐赠行为的影响,忽视非经济因素影响。本研究在企业能力基础上,加入社会网络、民间聚集及信任等衡量企业社会资本的指标,考察企业能力与企业社会资本对企业捐赠行为的影响。研究发现,企业能力对企业捐赠行为影响是存在的,同时企业社会网络规模、企业与经济部门的网络密度、企业民间聚集程度、企业对经济部门及非盈利部门的信任水平等都影响企业捐赠行为。企业能力是捐赠行为的基础,社会资本是捐赠行为的催化剂。     

起点公平、过程公平、结果公平与分配公平满意度*

深入研究居民对现阶段分配公平满意程度的认知、判断与评价,对于政府制定科学合理的调控政策、促进分配公平、提高居民满意程度、维护社会和谐与稳定具有十分重要的意义。本文基于浙江省11个地区958份居民家庭问卷调查数据,对居民收入分配不平等程度与分配公平满意度现状进行统计分析,构建Ordered Probit模型,从起点公平、过程公平、结果公平等方面对分配公平满意度的主要影响因素进行实证研究。研究结果表明：现阶段收入分配不平等程度较大,但居民对收入分配公平满意度相对较高。起点公平、过程公平、结果公平、人力资本、物质资本、社会保障对分配公平满意度有显著的正向影响。其中人力资本、起点公平、结果公平、社会保障对分配公平满意度的正向影响程度较大,过程公平对分配公平满意度的正向影响程度次之,而家庭劳动力人数、物质资本对分配公平满意度的正向影响程度较小。这一研究结果提供了重要的政策启示。     

虚拟社区社会资本的商业价值——基于广义虚拟经济的视角

网络中广泛存在的虚拟社区为人们提供了交流与共享的虚拟空间,在虚拟社区成员间的互动与沟通过程中,将形成一种非实物资本——社会资本.社会资本理论从三个维度上对此进行了阐释:结构维度、关系维度和认知维度.在社会化营销迅速发展的今天,虚拟社区中的社会资本也逐渐彰显出其商业价值.本文将结合社会资本理论与广义虚拟经济相关理论,以网络团购为例,对虚拟社区中社会资本对商品价值和交易活动的影响进行分析.     

The role of natural capital in supporting national income and social welfare

Using life satisfaction as a proxy for social welfare, this study contributes to the extant literature by empirically demonstrating that natural capital contributes to social welfare, functioning in part through increasing national income and in part through its direct effect on life satisfaction; the direct effect is approximately 40% greater than the indirect effect. This suggests that the true welfare benefits of natural capital may not be adequately reflected in conventional economic data and, therefore, studies seeking to evaluate the contribution of natural capital to human well-being should consider employing data sets that capture subjective elements of welfare. The magnitudes of the reported marginal effects of natural capital on social welfare, however, are small. This is perhaps due to the fact that (1) there are shortcomings in the measure of natural capital; (2) life satisfaction effects are unlikely to reflect the poorly understood benefits that natural capital provides; and (3) keystone species (such as mosquitoes) and integral ecosystems (such as wetlands) may be negatively associated with life satisfaction, even though such components of natural capital are vitally important to sustaining ecosystems and human life     

个体社会资本对职业成功影响的案例研究

基于社会资本的结构观,用关系强度、网络程度中心性以及网络中介中心性衡量个体的社会资本,研究个体的社会资本对职业成功的影响。案例研究结果显示:弱关系能提高员工的现有薪酬水平,强关系对晋升和职业满意度有积极影响;中介中心性对员工的现有薪酬水平、晋升和职业满意度有积极影响;程度中心性对现有薪酬水平没有影响,但对晋升和职业满意度有积极影响。     

社会资本视角下农民用水户满意度研究——基于陕西省宝鸡峡灌区农民用水户的调查

以社会资本为研究视角,对社会资本维度进行划分,并运用有序Logistic模型,基于陕西省宝鸡峡灌区农民用水户的调查,研究农民用水户对农民用水户协会的满意度及影响因素。研究结果表明,结构维度和认知维度社会资本是影响用水户对协会满意度的重要因素,家庭收入水平、农业收入占家庭收入比重、渠系完好率、协会专业化程度以及用水户参与积极性对用水户满意度有显著影响;关系维度社会资本、用水户性别、年龄、文化程度对用水户满意度没有显著影响。这表明农民用水户协会主要承担着灌溉管理和农业发展的职能,而其承担的社会功能相对较弱。     

Estimating worldwide life satisfaction

Whilst studies of life satisfaction are becoming more common-place, their global coverage is far from complete. This paper develops a new database of life satisfaction scores for 178 countries, bringing together subjective well-being data from four surveys and using stepwise regression to estimate scores for nations where no subjective data are available. In doing so, we explore various factors that predict between-nation variation in subjective life satisfaction, building on Vemuri and Costanza's (Vemuri, A.W., & Costanza, R., 2006. The role of human, social, built, and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level: toward a National Well-Being Index (NWI). Ecological Economics, 58:119-133.) four capitals model. The main regression model explains 76% of variation in existing subjective scores; importantly, this includes poorer nations that had proven problematic in Vemuri and Costanza's (Vemuri, A.W., & Costanza, R., 2006. The role of human, social, built, and natural capital in explaining life satisfaction at the country level: toward a National Well-Being Index (NWI). Ecological Economics, 58:119-133.) study. Natural, human and socio-political capitals are all found to be strong predictors of life satisfaction. Built capital, operationalised as GDP, did not enter our regression model, being overshadowed by the human capital and socio-political capital factors that it inter-correlates with. The final database presents a stop-gap resource that, until robust surveys are carried out worldwide, allows comparisons of subjective life satisfaction between nations to be made with reasonable confidence.     

Citibank; Citibank,Nader and The Facts

This paper aims to understand how Internet users may improve their social capital by investing in online social activities. We argue that the Internet can be a convenient and efficient means of maintaining existing social ties and/or of creating new ties. We seek to identify the determinants of online investments in social capital and the nature of the interaction with traditional forms of investment in social capital. Using a Luxembourg household survey, the econometric results reveal a significant positive impact of volunteer activities and trust (two measures of social capital) on online investments to maintain social capital, but more ambiguous results are found between online investments and face-to-face contacts with friends. By contrast, online investments to create new ties are poorly related to the Internet users' existing social capital, but depend on the opportunity cost of time.     

非营利组织推进企业社会责任机理探析

分析了非营利组织与企业社会责任的契合性,从历史演进的角度着重论述了非营利组织推进企业社会责任的三种方式：监督式、对话式和合作式推进方式,并详细探讨了目前最普遍的推进方式——合作式的具体形式选择和存在风险。在此基础上,扼要讨论了目前中国非营利组织推进企业社会责任所面临的困境以及解决思路。     

非营利组织信息披露与社会捐赠:一个博弈分析

对非营利组织来说,提高自身持续发展能力为社会提供公益服务是其目标之所在。实现这一目标,非营利组织必须建立一个固定的社会捐赠群体来获取稳定的资金来源。通过一个完全信息动态博弈模型的分析可知,非营利组织在管理和运作中只有充分披露所接收的社会捐赠款的使用效率和效果,才能满足捐赠人的信息需求并使其享受到捐赠行为所带来的效用,进而采取进一步捐赠行动,非营利组织也由此提高其社会公信力,并能持续地获得资金来源。     

强制性社会变迁中的社会资本及其经济效应——基于三峡工程移民的调查分析

本文基于三峡库区工程移民的实际调查数据,采用计量分析的方法,考察了强制性社会变迁中移民的社会资本及其经济效应.研究发现,在被动迁移过程中,工程移民的社会资本发生了消极的变化,而且它还受到移民迁移后的满意度的影响;同时,社会资本对移民经济地位的获得具有相当显著的积极影响,社会资本在很大程度上起到了补充移民扶持政策等正式制度不完善的作用.     

Decentralization,social capital,and regional growth: The case of the Italian North-South divide

This paper aims to show how a region's constant level of social capital may have a very different impact on its economic growth depending on whether the central or the local level of government is responsible for regional policy.Our case study is the economic performance of Northern and Southern Italy in the post-World War II period, when a long phase of regional convergence came to a sudden halt in the early 1970s. We focus on the economic effects of the 1970s institutional reforms on government decentralization and wage bargaining. Our main hypothesis is that decentralization allocates the provision of public capital to institutions, the local ones, more exposed to a territory's social capital. Since social capital is lower in the Southern regions, decentralization made their developmental policies less effective from 1970 onwards, and regional inequality increased.We build an endogenous growth model augmented to include the interaction between social capital and public investment as well as the reform of the Italian labour market. We calibrate our model using data of the Italian regions for 1951–71. Our quantitative results indicate that decentralization triggered the influence of local social capital on growth and played a central role in halting the convergence path of the low-social-capital regions.     

AN EXAMINATION OF VOLUNTEER MOTIVATION IN CREDIT UNIONS: INFORMING VOLUNTEER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT: Volunteer recruitment and retention is a problem that most credit unions experience. Research suggests that knowledge of volunteer motivation can inform volunteer management strategies. This paper uses a survey approach to determine whether current volunteers in credit unions in Northern Ireland are more motivated by the actual act of volunteering, by the output from the volunteering activity (including altruism) or because the volunteering activity increases their human capital value. Altruistic reasons are found to be the most influential, with the act of volunteering also scoring highly. This knowledge should inform volunteer recruitment programmes and internal appraisal processes as management can reinforce messages that provide positive feedback to volunteers on the social benefits being achieved by the credit union. This will further motivate current volunteers, ensuring retention. When motivation was analyzed by volunteer characteristics we found that older volunteers, retired volunteers and volunteers who are less educated are more motivated in their role. There was little evidence that individuals volunteer to improve their human capital worth.     

Reconsidering social capital: a latent class approach

Social capital has proven to be a useful concept, but has not been well-measured in the economics literature. We motivate and demonstrate the application of latent class models to measure social capital, based on the idea that social capital is an unobservable multidimensional construct. We explain and show the construction of latent classes that measure an individual’s social capital using data from the General Social Survey. Our method generates meaningfully different conclusions about the accumulation of social capital than those obtained by previous research. We present evidence that higher income influences social capital accumulation because of a higher opportunity cost of time. We also find evidence of complementarities in social capital accumulation within an individual’s peer group. Finally, we show that community heterogeneity influences the likelihood that individuals adhere to certain social norms independent of their propensity to participate in voluntary organizations.     

Intellectual capital: An empirical study of ITRI

Intellectual capital (IC) could provide a new instrument for observing organizational hidden value. While most intellectual capital studies are either theoretical or exploratory, some western research facilities are publishing annual reports based on intellectual capital. Nevertheless, Asian empirical studies are much rarer than western ones, let alone conducting comparison among them. Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), founded in 1973, is a non-profit national R&D organization, aiming to develop Taiwan industrial technologies. This paper firstly attempts to associate the components of the intellectual capital, namely, human capital, structural capital and relational capital with the value/performance of ITRI. Secondly, we find intellectual capital highly relevant to the value creation process and warrant strategic accumulation for R&D organizations.