A FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING SOCIAL CAPITAL IN SOUTH AFRICAN ORGANISATIONS
Mark Turpin, Consultant, Kessels & Smit: The Learning Company, South Africa
Adèle Thomas, Professor of Management, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract
Putnam (1995, 67) describes social capital as “features of social organization such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit”.
This paper reviews the definitions of social capital and the challenges involved in its measurement.  Contextual trends and developments in South Africa that impact on social capital creation are examined and a suggested framework for supporting social capital formation in the workplace is presented.
Research on social capital in South Africa holds many lessons for emerging economies elsewhere in the developing world.  The South African workplace represents an unique opportunity and locus for starting the process of creating and building social capital.  It is growing in diversity and increasingly transcends the distorted historical social geography of the country that alienated groups of people from one another i.e. that promoted the opposite of social capital development.
This theoretical review culminates in three research questions that guide future empirical research.
Keywords:  social capital, South Africa, workplace, learning