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In Good Company: How Social
Capital Makes Organizations Work
By Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak
Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
Reviewed by Rick E. Robinson
Most business books tend to fall into dust-jacket euphemistic
categories such as "compelling" or "insightful"
or the kiss-of-death, all-purpose nonendorsement of "interesting."
In Good Company is a useful book, though it offers
almost nothing really new in terms of content. Its strength lies
in the breadth and balance of the authors' attempt to address an
always contested and sometimes fugitive set of constructs. Their
version of the concept of social capital provides them with a frame
that has flexibility and comprehensiveness. They acknowledge that
this is a difficult arena to address because it is pervasive. How
do you create a compelling argument about something that is as enveloping
as water is to a fish?
Unlike most business books, In Good Company does not rely
on examples or case studies to make one or two relatively circumscribed
points. Cohen and Prusak move fluidly but simply between three kinds
of ideas: terms and concepts, principles, and practices. They offer
a big notion, give you a sense of how it works, and then describe
what it does, or could mean, in an organization.
Terms and concepts. The early chapters hit the
foundational constructs and the corollary terms that give them real
utility: social capital, trust (individual and organizational),
networks, communities, space, storytelling, knowledge, social groups
at a high level, membership, and more. They elaborate the basic
"social capital" conceit by introducing the notion of
investment and return on social capital. All are introduced clearly,
and with a nice blend of example, history, and citational support.
Principles. A number of the big constructs have
practical manifestations that can be taken as principles. The elaboration
of social capital into the realized principle of a social network's
pervasiveness—the fact that we can fail to see the capital
that surrounds us because we are always of it, as well—makes
for a much more powerful idea than "context." Other principles
are equally thought-provoking: the engaged organization, interdependence,
the structural/logical relationship between communities and networks,
and how organizations support conversation.
Practices (and tools). Theory without practice
would have made this book much thinner and much less useful, but
that does not mean the authors offer fatuous recipes for creating
a "good company." Rather, they focus on the delicate balance
implied in managing something inherently social. The book delves
into a variety of "practice" topics: the visibility of
social capital, the importance of embodiment, the symbolic value
of space, the persistence of information, the manifestation of purpose,
information distribution, collaboration, and the fragility of trust
and the notion of being trustworthy. All are briefly but usefully
illustrated with examples.
The authors do a nice job of conditioning all these constructs.
They provide solid negatives and useful cautions for nearly all,
such as the cost of low trust or the "underside" of networks
and communities: exclusiveness, rigidity, and groupthink. And each
section of the book returns to the notion of investing in social
capital. The authors never treat successful communities as givens.
They suggest and review how to invest in trust, how to invest in
networks and communities, what the return on an investment in time
might be, and how space or organization can become an effective
stimulant for the growth of a network. These ideas are not self-evident.
Much is left to be tested and tried out. But I can't imagine reading
this book and not having at least one good hypothesis on how to
make your company work better. The best use of this book? Buy a
copy for your CEO.
This review originally appeared in the Summer
2002 Design Management Review
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