Conference Agenda

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.