A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

Using data collected from multiple respondents in all the business units of a large multinational electronics company, we examined the relationships both among the structural, relational, and cogni...

/pdf/social-capital-and-value-creation-the-role-of-intrafirm-3uuwrj6crb.pdf

Social Capital and Value Creation: The Role of Intrafirm Networks

This article outlines the mechanism by which brokerage provides social capital. Opinion and behavior are more homogeneous within than between groups, so people connected across groups are more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of options otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital. I review evidence consistent with the hypothesis, then look at the networks around managers in a large American electronics company. The organization is rife with structural holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span structural holes. The between-group brokers are more likely to express ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to have ideas evaluated as valuable. I close with implications for creativity and structural change.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/421787.pdf

Structural Holes and Good Ideas.

Organizations evolve through periods of incremental or evolutionary change punctuated by discontinuous or revolutionary change. The challenge for managers is to adapt the culture and strategy of their organizations to its current environment, but to do so in a way that does not undermine its ability to adjust to radical changes in that environment. They must, in other words, create an ambidextrous organization—one capable of simultaneously pursuing both incremental and discontinuous innovation.

Ambidextrous Organizations: Managing Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change:

This study explored the effects of social capital, measured both absolutely and relatively, on CEO compensation in a sample of 61 CEO-compensation committee chairperson dyads. We controlled for var...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/257069.pdf

Social Capital at the Top: Effects of Social Similarity and Status on CEO Compensation

Tournament mechanisms suggest the need for ever larger rewards to motivate those at the highest organizational levels. But arguments for the efficiency of executive pay compression have also been made. This study reports the results of an empirical investigation of executive compensation using over two-hundred firms and in excess of two thousand executives per year over a 5-year period. Results are consistent with the operation of tournaments but fail to find support for the empirical importance of considerations of pay equity at the top of corporations.

Top Executive Pay: Tournament or Teamwork?

The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful criticisms and comments of Peter Cappelli, Glenn Carroll, Heather Haveman, David Levine, Brian Main, Trond Petersen, and the anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript and the Institute of Industrial Relations and the Center for Research in Management for research support. Using an agency theory framework and data on 89 Fortune 500 firms, we assess whether the granting of golden parachutes to chief executive officers is the result of an economically rational process or determined by the social influence of the CEO. While increased takeover risk is associated with a higher incidence of GPs, as predicted by economic theory, CEOs who are able to appoint more outsiders to their board are also more likely to have GPs. These results suggest that both economic and social influence perspectives have merit and that the importance of each may depend on the ownership structure of the fi rm.-

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2393510.pdf

Golden Parachutes: CEOs and the Exercise of Social Influence

We used the results from Financial World’s widely publicized certification contest, CEO of the Year, to investigate the impact of such contests on firm performance and executive compensation. A certification contest ranks actors on performance criteria that key stakeholders accept as credible and legitimate. We found that certified CEOs received higher compensation than noncertified CEOs when performance was high but lower remuneration when performance was poor. Although certifications appear to generate positive abnormal returns when they are first announced, the longer-term impact of CEO certifications appears to be negative.

/pdf/the-burden-of-celebrity-the-impact-of-ceo-certification-3nvje78zbg.pdf

The burden of celebrity: the impact of ceo certification contests on ceo pay and performance

We examine the blending of informational and political forces in organizational categorizations in the context of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation. By law, corporate boards are required to provide shareholders with annual justifications for their CEO pay allocations that contain an explicit performance comparison with a set of peer companies that are selected by the board. We collected and analyzed information on the industry membership of chosen peers from a 1993 sample of 280 members of the Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500. Our results suggest that boards anchor their comparability judgments within a firm's primary industry, thus supporting the argument that boards' peer definitions center around commonsense industry categories. At the same time, however, we found that boards selectively define peers in self-protective ways, such that peer definitions are expanded beyond industry boundaries when firms perform poorly, industries perform well, CEOs are paid highly, and when shareholders are powerfu...

James B. Wade

Papers

Social Capital at the Top: Effects of Social Similarity and Status on CEO Compensation

Top Executive Pay: Tournament or Teamwork?

Golden Parachutes: CEOs and the Exercise of Social Influence

The burden of celebrity: the impact of ceo certification contests on ceo pay and performance

Industry Categories and the Politics of the Comparable Firm in CEO Compensation