This proposal addresses the significant contribution of soft skills to career and higher education progression and their growing impact on the modern workplace. The paper centers on key interpersonal competencies such as open communication, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence as they gain more recognition for being instrumental to academic and workplace success. This review centers on case studies and evolving employer needs, investigating how higher education can purposefully incorporate soft skills into curricula to prepare students for real-world challenges. Additionally, discrepancies between the modern workforce and traditional subject-based education, underscoring the need for holistic educational practices are examined. By taking various approaches, such as project-based learning, experiential learning, and role-play, the study suggests that the incorporation of soft skills in curricula can enhance student leadership development and build social capital. Through evaluation of the role of higher education in soft skills development and social capital building, there is room for continuous improvement and professional development.

The organizations and events established by immigrant groups in the host society play a key part, besides other factors, in which acculturation strategies (Berry, 1974, 1997) are followed by them and how successful their integration can be. One of the challenges is how immigrants can maintain their social ties with their own ethno-cultural community and culture of the country of origin, while also integrating successfully into the host society. In this presentation we provide a case study of the Hungarian St. Stephen’s Ball organized in Montreal between 1959 and 2013, an event whose key objective was to bring together Hungarians and non-Hungarians, facilitating the “harmonious integration” of immigrants into the Montreal-Canadian society. Based on archival research and interviews, the paper analyzes how organizers achieved their objectives by activating social capital, relying on strategies and models outlined by Berry (1974, 1997), Lin (2008) and Granovetter (1973) decades later, revealing a two-way process of integration, whereby, in parallel with the acculturation of Montreal Hungarians into the majority society, this ethno-community was continuously expanded by means of the conscious building of social relations and social capital, with members of the host society occupying key community-forming positions.

Social capital is recognized as a key predictor of psychosocial well-being, yet its effects in least-developed countries, like Ethiopia, remain unclear. Current cross-sectional studies overlook the well-being effect of various aspects of social capital and face endogeneity issues. Using World Gallup Poll data collected from Ethiopian households between 2013 and 2020, we rigorously examined the influence of different aspects of social capital on subjective well-being using an innovative pseudo-panel approach. To this end, we fitted several models of Arellano and Bond's system generalized method of moments (sys-GMM) using a stepwise model selection procedure.

This study reveals that regardless of socioeconomic and demographic attributes and time, at least one aspect of social capital significantly affects life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Interestingly, the various aspects of social capital are differently associated with the two aspects of subjective well-being. While almost all indicators of social capital significantly predicted emotional well-being, a single indicator significantly affected life satisfaction. Finally, it uncovered that the current perception of life satisfaction and emotional experiences are significantly associated with past satisfaction and experiences.

Therefore, apart from confirming the typical hypothesis that social capital is a significant predictor of subjective well-being, the pseudo-panel approach provides a new avenue to improve the causal explanation of well-being by accounting for the temporal ordering of past experiences. It also unlocks opportunities to transform the readily available cross-sectional data into a meaningful pseudo-panel dataset that links micro- and aggregate-level issues. This perspective can help policymakers recognize the relationship between past and present well-being for targeted interventions.

During a humanitarian response, the salient feature of social capital is not simply it's mere presence, but its accessibility (Travers, 2024). When one cannot access their social networks, the social capital an individual has is mute. Therefore the moment of activation presents a unique lens to understand the ways in which social capital are leveraged. Following a decade of humanitarian response interventions, the paper presents a casual loop diagram of the ways in which individuals affected by natural disasters draw on their social capital. The findings support an understanding of social capital as a dynamic resource, and theorizes the compounding influence of uncertainty.

This paper examines the role of social capital within triadic social structures, extending traditional dyadic analysis. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s theories of dyads and triads, as well as foundational insights from balance theory and signed network analysis, we extend traditional network theories by conceptualizing relationships along a continuum from empathetic to antipathetic rather than treating them as binary (positive or non-existent). In doing so, this study contributes to ongoing discussions in social network research by emphasizing the role of relational quality in shaping institutional stability, collective action, and the exchange of relational goods. The bipolar continuum of empathy and antipathy introduced here provides a rich framework for analyzing social structures and their role in mediating economic and social exchanges. The resultant ten triadic structures highlight how combinations of empathetic, indifferent, and antipathetic relationships shape social capital dynamics. In doing so, it critiques the assumption that triads naturally resolve into balanced states and instead suggests that structural persistence depends on the embeddedness of social capital—understood here as the emotional connections of trust, regard, and empathy. This conceptualization aligns with Heider’s focus on attitudes such as liking, valuing, and esteeming, and their opposites, which form the basis of social cohesion or division. By examining how these structures facilitate or hinder the exchange of relational and attachment-value goods, the paper underscores the practical implications of social capital in various contexts, including families, workplaces, political institutions, and broader societal formations.

Research on place attachment is important as it is known to help foster social capital and civic participation. It is influenced by living arrangements, the residential context, and resident interaction. Additionally, contact assets, such as children or pets, affect resident interaction and the use of community spaces. However, previous studies have primarily examined the effects of residential context and resident interaction, while the role of contact assets has received limited attention. Their impact across diverse environments is still unclear, necessitating further research. This study examines how the relationship between resident interaction and place attachment varies by residential context and contact assets.

We used questionnaire data from an online survey in Japan (N = 11,002). We applied probabilistic latent semantic analysis to cluster residential contexts, then divided each cluster by the presence or absence of contact assets. Finally, Bayesian network analysis examined how resident interaction and place attachment relate within each divided group.

The results identified four residential contexts, showing that areas with abundant community resources had more residents with place attachment. Across all contexts, greeting others, recognizing faces and names, and having reliable acquaintances consistently correlated with place attachment. For individuals with contact assets, even light social interactions such as greetings contributed to attachment, whereas for those without, recognizing acquaintances by both face and name was crucial. Among those without contact assets, fewer acquaintances were needed in areas with abundant community resources. This study highlights how effective social connections for place attachment vary by community resources and contact assets.

We describe a framework on bridging social capital in humanitarian contexts for inclusive resilience. Bridging social capital denotes social interactions and associations that connect communities, groups, or organisations with socio-spatial inequalities and polarizations. It enables the participants to build trust and maintain channels of communication, potentially influencing several broader dimensions of social cohesion and civic engagement. However, bridging social capital can re-perpetuate inequality and tensions too in humanitarian contexts. If benefits are not shared fairly, certain groups may be compelled to move, and powerful community interests may exert dysfunctional control. Challenges with the availability, accessibility, and activability of resources through social support can push bridging social capital into crisis.

Current concepts highlight what bridging is; they fail to address the various hindrances to, drivers of, and norms for such social processes, thus prolonging resilience building. The concept needs a paradigm shift to what bridging does through extrinsic connectedness, involving the mobilisation of resources for inclusion and empowerment in community interactions and daily experiences.

This article presents an ontological framework encapsulating the logic of bridging social capital. The framework systemically deconstructs the combinatorial complexity of the problem around the dimensions of social and capital and explicates the pathways of social inclusion. The ontology highlights all three drivers of the bridging process—barriers, facilitators, and norms—and is applicable in any heterogeneous society and across diverse humanitarian contexts. It is useful for systematically analysing bridging’s critical linkages for social inclusion, involving participants’ predispositions and aspirations, as well as barriers, norms, and facilitators in their collaborations for resources to develop strategies of inclusive resilience. The framework thus adopts a dynamic concept of a more interactive understanding of social action and inclusion.

Principal Topic

While social capital has multiple definitions (see, e.g., Bourdieu, 1985; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1995, etc.), it has two common elements: a set of informal values that generates trust and enhances cooperation among members of a group, and a set of networks that facilitates group actions. From a macroeconomic perspective, economists have long recognized that social capital is essential to societal economic success and it promotes economic growth through information sharing and cooperation. Another mechanism through which social capital creates an impact on the economy is that strong social capital benefits corporations at the firm level. With a firm-level focus, this study aims to investigate mainly two research questions. First, what is the impact of social capital on a firm’s operational efficiency? To address the controversial debate on gender diversity in the corporate governance domain, our second research question is: how does the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) gender affect the operational link between social capital and corporate performance?

Methods and Results

We obtain social capital data from the 2018 report, The Geography of Social Capital in America by the Joint Economic committee Republicans. Using a sample of U.S. listed firms (65,481 firm-year observations) over the period from 1996 to 2021, we employ the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to construct the operational efficiency score for all sample firms.

We use the following baseline model to test our research question 1:

"EFFICIENCYt = β0 + β1 SKt + ∑ βi Firm_Level_Controls+ ∑ βj State_Level_Controls "

"+ ∑ βk State + ∑ βl Industry+ ∑ βm YEARt + et"

where the dependent variable is the DEA score of firms, and the variable of interest is social capital. Firm-level control variables (equity market value, market share, free cash flow, firm age, Herfindahl index, foreign business, efficiency lag), state-level control variables (religious adherence, industry effect, per capita GDP, percentage of population growth and population density) and year effect are also included in our model.

Consistent with our expectation, the results indicate that firms in high social capital regions have higher operational efficiency. We further our sensitivity test using an instrumental variable (IV) approach (a state-level measure of racial fragmentation as IV) and find consistent results.

To test for the moderating effect of CEO gender (research question 2), we conduct a cross-sectional analysis including as explanatory variables the interaction terms: SK*FEMALE for all three of the social capital measures in our baseline model. The results suggest that the positive relation between social capital and operational efficiency is more pronounced for firms with female CEOs.

As robustness tests, we use the length of the operating cycle as an alternative proxy for operational efficiency. We find that companies with female CEOs report shorter operation cycles, suggesting higher operational efficiency which is consistent with our baseline results. We further our test by employing county-level social capital data to validate our baseline results, which we computed using state-level measures and find consistent results.

The level of interpersonal trust is declining in most Western societies. This severely damages the coherence of society and hampers the ability of the political system to make and implement transformative change.

The hypothesis that inequality reduces interpersonal trust has been around for a long time. It is clearly visible in cross-sectional data. However, the thesis has never been confirmed in longitudinal designs. The paper attempts to find new approaches to the missing link between the longitudinal null findings and the robust evidence that exists cross-sectionally, in psychology, and is often debated in the policy arena. It does so by ruling out artifacts of insufficiently detailed trust questions.

The hypothesis that the lack of longitudinal evidence of inequality on trust is due to the fact that the change is too small to be statistically detectable as long as it is only tested with yes/no questions seems likely given that there is also a relationship between interpersonal and political trust that has long been undetected due to artifacts. Indeed, many of the most cited papers on inequality and trust use only the reduced index. The problem posed by the lack of differentiation is also easy to understand theoretically: On average, we remember negative memories much better than positive ones. In addition, the only yes/no option makes the question sound even sharper, so a yes can only be expected with very high scores.

Modern societies are complex social structures, characterised by various dimensions of social stratification. As members cannot possibly form connections to all other members, cooperation, and social cohesion rely on generalised social trust, and the absence of prejudice between social groups. One major determinant of trust and prejudice is connectedness: Trust develops in predictable, long-term interactions. Furthermore, the contact hypothesis and social capital theories imply that positive intergroup contact is essential to reducing prejudices, accepting diversity, and generalising trust to the whole population. While this relationship of intergroup contact and trust has mainly been tested with ethnic diversity and ethnic neighbourhood segregation, two important gaps in the literature remain: Much previous literature does not investigate actual interactions in social networks, but only contact possibilities in neighbourhoods, and a major dimension of social stratification—social class—has been largely neglected. At the same time, evidence implies that neighbourhoods, workplace, and friendship networks are segregated with respect to social class. If only few social relationships exist across social class boundaries, less intergroup contact is possible, which could strongly affect generalised social trust. I utilise data from the German National Educational Panel Study and drawing on position generators, I can approximate how many people in occupations from different social classes actors know. I then estimate whether having interclass contacts affects generalised trust and intergroup prejudices. Our findings shed light on the impact of social class segregation on social cohesion and how fostering interclass social networks can mitigate these consequences.

Over the past seven decades, the private car has increasingly symbolized connectivity, social inclusion, and status, contributing to higher automobile usage. This trend has led to significant environmental, economic, and societal challenges, including increased greenhouse gas emissions, air and noise pollution, climate change, traffic fatalities, and health issues like obesity and physical inactivity. As a response, active transportation, especially walking, has gained prominence as a promising strategy to mitigate these concerns while providing community-level benefits, fostering social interactions, and building social capital. Europe’s focus on sustainable mobility and children's physical health since the late 1990s has led to initiatives like Walking School Buses.

This study explores the barriers to full adoption and the challenges encountered by the Walking School Bus service in Ferrara. Using a qualitative approach, the research utilizes semi-structured interviews to collect data from municipal managers, school managers, and parents. Through thematic analysis, five key themes were identified: "social capital," "service considerations," "environmental sustainability," "service interactions," and "willingness to participate." These themes highlight the influence of parental social structure, parents' perspectives on the service, sustainability practices, factors guiding parental decisions, and reasons for low participation or service discontinuation. The findings provide valuable insights to inform policymakers and enhance the implementation of such services.