Synopsis: The core issue for this study concerns the social and political consequences of the rise of knowledge societies, in particular the capacity of the Internet for strengthening democratic participation, social capital, and civic engagement in Britain. To consider these issues, Part I summarizes debates about the impact of the Internet on the public sphere. The main influence of this deve...

Does the socioeconomic status (SES) that one's (ego's) network members (alters) occupy indicate social resources or social comparison standards in the dynamics of health across culture? Using nationally representative data simultaneously collected from the United States and urban China, this study examines two competing theories-social capital and comparative reference group-in the two societie...

Trust is a key word in current public debates. Bankers have become one of the most distrusted professional groups in the West. Politicians in most democra‐ cies have experienced for decades the decline of political trust. Japanese no longer trust the Tokyo Electric Power Company Tepco and their government after the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima. Germans have lost confidence in the European c...

This article advances a communicative approach to social capital that views communication as the fundamental source of societal integration. We contend that integration occurring at the system level via news consumption and at the individual level via interpersonal discussion is amplified through ties at the community level. This cross-level interaction is theorized to encourage civic engagemen...

Over the last several years, a variety of Web 2.0 applications has been widely adopted by individual users and recently has received great attention from organizations. While an increasing number of organizations have started utilizing Web 2.0 applications in hopes of boosting collaboration and driving innovations, only a small number of different theoretical perspectives are available in the l...

This paper presents the concept and an empirical evaluation of the course “High-tech Entrepreneurship and New Media”. The course design is based on socio-cultural theories of learning and considers the role of social capital in entrepreneurial networks. By integrating student teams into the communities of practice of local start-ups, we offer learning opportunities to students, companies, and a...

Motivating people to contribute knowledge has become an important research topic and a major challenge for organizations in the Knowledge Economy. In order to promote knowledge-sharing, managers need to understand the mechanism that drives individuals to contribute their valuable knowledge. Several theories have been applied to study the knowledge-sharing behavior, including social exchange, so...

The migration literature has identified various feedback mechanisms which explain why, once started, migration processes tend to become partly self‐perpetuating, leading to the formation of migrant networks and migration systems. However, existing theories on the internal dynamics of migration processes are characterised by three fundamental weaknesses. First, their focus on migrant networks co...

Social capital is an essential complement to the concepts of natural, physical and human capital and can be usedfor beneficial or harmful ends-or simply be allowed to dissipate. While allforms of capital are essentialfor development, none of them are sufficient in and of themselves. In this paper, Ifocus first on the concept of human-made capital and examine some of the essential similarities b...

Organizations are attempting to leverage their knowledge resources by employing knowledge management (KM) systems, a key form of which are electronic knowledge repositories (EKRs). A large number of KM initiatives fail due to reluctance of employees to share knowledge through these systems. Motivated by such concerns, this study formulates and tests a theoretical model to explain EKR usage by k...