Effects of social capital on processes in a regional strategic network

Understanding the role of social capital is vital for implementing cluster policies as regional strategic networks and cluster initiatives are influenced by the local socio-economic context and its social capital. Social capital can create value for companies by closure of the network structure (bonding), which maintains internal mutual trust but bonding can also over-embed companies in their social context, whereas sparse networks that provide links to other parts of relevant business networks (bridging) often provide greater innovation benefits. We provide a conceptual framework applied to a case study of a Swedish regional strategic network, and examples mostly of positive effects of bridging social capital and negative effects of the bonding form are identified. This is interpreted against the background of the regional dependence-oriented culture.