Corporate social capital: Results of empirical research in a financial institution

The aim of this paper is to present results from empirical research on social networks, conducted in a financial institution in Poland. The topic is approached within a corporate social capital framework. Corporate social capital is defined as networks of social relations existing within a corporation, by which a company has access and a possibility to activate material and virtual resources. This concept is divided into two types: bonding social capital that affects performance by influencing employees’ motivation and engagement and bridging social capital that affects performance through advantages of access to valuable information and support of influential individuals. The first is conceptualised as residing in relations between team members, integrated by strong social group norms and group identification. The second is assumed to deal with relations between employees from different teams, as connected by breaching groups’ borders and building bridges over structural holes.The aim of the research is to investigate the influence of bonding and bridging social capital on employees’ and teams’ performance, moderated by type of the tasks. The research includes both quantitative methods (based on surveys) and qualitative methods (based on interviews and observations). The quantitative part was to test the theoretical propositions, the qualitative part was to prepare measuring tools, get to know the context and interpret the results.The main findings of the research support some of the propositions: bonding social capital is found to be of value especially in the case of operational tasks and there is also some evidence that different aspects of social capital interact while influencing performance. What is more, the research provided a profound study of bonding social capital, both in terms of its advantages and disadvantages. In opposition to the conception before the research, both relations in the team and outside the team in the particular company under the study were finally assessed as of bonding character and bridging social capital was not identified within the research context.