MASTER THESIS
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITAL, GENDER, AND FIRM
PERFORMANCE. A LITERATURE REVIEW.
University of Groningen Faculty of Economics and Business MsBA: Small Business and Entrepreneurship
January 2017
By: Anta Kyrili Student Number: S2832216
Word Count: 15707
Supervisor:
Dr. S. Murtinu – University of Groningen Co-assistant:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITAL, GENDER, AND FIRM
PERFORMANCE. A LITERATURE REVIEW.
Abstract
Table of Contents
1.Introduction ... 1
1.1 Introducing the main topics and the contribution of the Thesis... 1
1.2 Social Capital ... 2 1.3 Gender Diversity ... 4 2.Methodology ... 5 2.1 Data collection ... 6 2.2 Data analysis ... 7 2.3 Data synthesis... 7 3. Results ... 8
3.1 Social capital and firm performance ... 8
3.1.1 Introduction to common terms characterizing social capital ... 8
3.1.2 Bonding and Bridging ties ... 9
3.2 Gender Diversity and Firm Performance ...11
3.3 Gender diversity and social capital ...14
3.3.1 Social Identity (Homophily) ...15
3.3.2 Human capital ...18
3.3.3 Social Feminist Theory ...20
1.Introduction
1.1 Introducingthe main topics and the contribution of the Thesis
It is widely acknowledged that small and medium firms (SMEs) are essential for the economy since they contribute to wealth creation, employment and innovation (Carter & Jones-Evans, 2006). However, there are a lot of barriers to resources for SMEs. Resources are essential for firm performance and especially Barney (1991) mentioned that “firm resources include all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge etc. controlled by a firm that enable firm to conceive of and implement strategies that improve its efficiency and effectiveness” (p. 101). Previous literature points out that entrepreneurs’ personal networks are an essential resource since by using them an entrepreneur can access and identify opportunities and gain legitimacy (Bhagavatula et al., 2010; Elfring & Hulsink, 2003). Entrepreneurs’ social capital is represented by all the relationships that an entrepreneur has acquired, which could be either directly connected with the company (such as suppliers) or not (such as friends). Social capital has received a lot of attention in the literature and it has been shown that social capital is strategically significant to the firm because through her/his network the entrepreneur can gain resources, new information, guidance, and endorsement (Steier & Greenwood, 2000; Shane & Stuart, 2002; Huang et al., 2012). Social capital may thus improve many aspects of the firm, and finally contribute to firm growth (Zimmerman & Zeitz, 2002) and firm success (Ellis, 2000).
Another important topic in the entrepreneurship and sociology literatures – among others – is about gender differences. Several researchers have studied the similarities and differences of general attitudes, preferences, relationships etc. between men and women. Much importance to the above issues has been given in the women entrepreneurs literature where scholars study similarities and differences between women and men in a variety of business topics. Gender diversity is important for the firm because it can either positively or negatively affect the firm performance. According to many scholars, diversity in demographic characteristics can offer positive outcomes, such as improved decision making and creative problem solving (Watson et al.,1993; Pelled et al., 1999), which ultimately affect positively the firm performance. On the other hand, others scholars claimed that gender diversity might engender negative outcomes such as decrease in group cohesion (Smith et al., 1994) and increase in group conflict (Jehn, 1995), which both can affect negatively the firm performance.
associated mechanisms explaining corporate outcomes – are not known, which creates a gap in the literature. In particular, the gender traits that affect social capital are not known as well. Through this Thesis, an attempt to connect and find the relationships between gender and social capital will be discussed and a conceptual model will be presented. The association between gender and social capital may lead to understand the channels through which gender affect firm performance. At the best of the author's knowledge there is not a literature review or a conceptual model in which the relationship between gender and social capital is explained. Moreover, there is no other literature survey explaining contingencies for the above linkages. Thus, an extensive literature survey is needed. In the present Thesis a deep and extensive literature review will be conducted in order to present a conceptual model using all the three theoretical constructs (social capital, gender, firm performance) and the linkages among them.
Thus, the overarching research question of this Thesis will be the following: Which is the relationship between gender and social capital which ultimately affects firm performance?
This Thesis is organized as follows: Firstly, definitions of social capital and gender diversity will be presented. Secondly, the methodology used in this Thesis during the collection of the articles from the literature will be described in order to ensure the validity of the findings and give the opportunity to the other researchers to replicate it. Thirdly, an extensive presentation of the different perspectives about the social capital and gender and the empirical evidence on their impact on the firm performance will be presented. Then a synthesis of the results and the development of a conceptual model in which the relationship and the links between the theoretical constructs will follow. After the synthesis, a discussion about the contribution of the conceptual model and some contingencies of the conceptual model will take place. Finally, the Thesis will conclude by explaining the main findings and suggest some possible future research questions.
1.2 Social Capital
In this chapter the following topics will be discussed: First, a short historic review about the evolution of the studies in social capital will be presented. Second, an attempt to define social capital will follow. Finally, the chapter will finish with the presentation of the importance of social capital on firm performance.
until nowadays social capital have been studied in order to explain social phenomena. First, Coleman (1988) has presented the role of social capital as an influence for the development of human capital. Human capital refers to the skills and the knowledge acquired by an individual. Thus, according to Coleman (1988) social capital into and out of a family gained by the parents, will influence the knowledge of the child. Then, Baker (1990) presented the social capital role as an influence on the economic performance of the company, which means that he presented a new level of social capital. Instead the study being in human level, he studied social capital in business level. Finally, according to Putnam (1993), the role of social capital is to influence geographic regions; more specifically he supported that in order to develop economic growth, good governance and peaceful societies, social capital should be developed by societies, regions and countries. However, many researchers have paid a lot of attention to the topic of social capital after the introduction to the topic by Bourdieu (1986). Nowadays a lot of attention has been given to the relationship between social capital and firm performance by many scholars (Adler & Kwon, 2002).
There are several ways of defining social capital in the literature and therefore there is no specific definition. Later in this Thesis some differences in the literature on social capital will be presented. Some authors such as Baker (1990) referred to the term of social capital only as the structure of the relationships, while others, such as Bourdieu (1986) and Putnam (1995), also included the actual and the potential resources which can be gained through networks in the definition; others, such as Coleman (1990), included the norms and the values associated with networks. However, the main logic is that the use of network relationships provides the individual with valuable resources (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Bourdieu, 1986). Though one of the most commonly used definitions of social capital in the literature is this of Putnam (2000, p19): social capital “refers to connections among individuals- social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them”. Thus, in this Thesis a broader definition of social capital is used, namely: All the assets and resources that an individual can gain through the relationships, networks, and communities in which he/she is involved.
expand the risks (Lipparini & Sobrero, 1994). Furthermore, according to Elfring & Hulsink (2003), through social capital an organization can build legitimacy, which is associated with small firms since small firms are characterized by lack of it. Additionally, through network contacts an organization can gain opportunities for learning (Gulati, 1999; Kale et al., 2000) and opportunities for developing new capabilities (Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003; Inkpen & Tsang, 2005). Seeing only some of the positive aspects which were just presented concerning the relationship between social capital and organization, it is obvious that the role of social capital is essential for the firm and for the firm’s performance.
In spite of the importance of social capital for the firm and despite the fact that social capital is a widely widespread issue in the literature, the relationship between social capital firm performance is not clear (Maurer & Ebers, 2006; Stam et al, 2014; Stuart & Sorenson, 2007). Ambiguity exists between findings and there are opposite perspectives and controversies. Both the ambiguity of the findings and the importance of the social capital for the firm, are reasons for someone to be interested and search more about social capital.
1.3 Gender Diversity
In this chapter, some of the reasons why women have different attitudes and reactions in comparison with men will be presented and emphasis will be given on the differences associated with the firm. The focus of business studies on gender differences, the connections and the relationships of gender differences associated with the organization will be presented as well.
These differences can also affect the business procedure during the two genders’ interaction in an organization. One of the most studied fields in the literature is about entrepreneurship and more specifically about women entrepreneurs. In the paper of Brush & Hisrich (1991) several differences between entrepreneur men and entrepreneur women and their connection with the firm survival or growth are presented. In their article, they present differences which are associated with the personal background, educational and occupational experiences, motivations, skills, and the knowledge of the entrepreneur. They did find differences in the motivation of the entrepreneur, the skills, the access to resources, the chosen industrial type, and the business performance. Except for these differences, there are several challenges that women have to deal with. One of these challenges according to Greene et al. (2003) is insufficient access to capital. Due to this insufficient access to capital, women are not taken seriously by stakeholders such as clients and employees because women are considered as non-professional. Furthermore, in the extensive literature review by Jennings & Brush (2013), they included more than 30 years literature and one of their main contributions is that according to the literature, women entrepreneurs have the tendency to have small businesses, which are less profitable and they grow slower. All of these results may emanate from the challenges that women are required to deal with. However, in this Thesis the main focus is in the differences between men and women which can influence social capital and ultimately firm performance.
2.Methodology
2.1 Data collection
According to Crossan & Apaydin (2010) the three ways that a researcher can use in order to collect data are by a) employing a panel of experts to identify relevant papers; b) using knowledge of the existing literature to select articles; and c) searching various databases using keywords. Due to the inability of the researcher of this Thesis to employ a panel of experts in order to identify relevant papers, this Thesis used a combination of the second and in the third way. Using as a starting point already known papers from the literature in the topics of social capital and gender diversity, the basic knowledge was extracted. The next step was the search of keywords in distinguished database of University of Groningen (Business Source Premier), Google Scholars, and JSTOR. The initial keywords used in searching for data was the following: social capital, gender diversity and firm performance. Different researchers use different terms to describe the same concept in the same research area, thus words and terms which can replace “social capital”, “gender diversity”, and firm performance were also included in the search process as keywords. Relevant words for social capital were: network(ing), social network(s), social tie(s), weak/strong tie(s), and social connection(s). Relevant words for gender diversity were: gender, diversity, female(s), women, woman, team(s), founding team(s,) entrepreneurial team(s), team composition, group composition, team diversity, group diversity, faultline(s). Finally, relevant words for firm performance were: development and growth.
Behavior, Small Business Economics, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Technovation, The Academy of Management Annals, The Review of Economic Studies, Women, Minorities, and Employment Discrimination, Women-owned Businesses, Women on Corporate Boards of Directors,
and Work and Occupations. Due to the fact that both “social capital” and “gender diversity” are terms used in the sociology and psychology literature, journals from those fields were included. Using again the two aforementioned criteria, a list of papers was selected. For the second criterion, in order to assess the quality of the papers and the ranking of the journals where they have been published, impact factor and article influence score sourced from SCImago Journal and Country Rank were checked. The list of journals reviewed in this Thesis from sociology and psychology literatures is the following: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Sociology, Applied Psychology,
Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Rationality and Society, Social Forces, Social Structures and Network Analysis, Sociology of Education, The American Prospect, and The Sociological Quarterly. In the searching procedure, there was no time limitation. In Appendix 1, a table with exact number of papers used from every journal can be found.
2.2 Data analysis
In this section the results of the search will be presented. After using the aforementioned procedure in order to discover the papers relevant to this Thesis, more than 400 relevant papers were found. Many of these papers included more than one of the topics. Due to time constraints and the large amount of papers, the review of all of these papers weren’t feasible. Thus, the papers found from the collection procedure were filtered by testing their relevance. In order for their relevance to be checked, the abstract of every paper was studied. Papers about social capital were relevant if the business aspects were included. Also, papers about gender were relevant if their topics could be used in order to describe the social capital of the gender. By using this way of filtering and ensuring the relevance of the assembled papers, the amount of literature was limited in 97 articles and 17 books.
2.3 Data synthesis
concluded in some suggestions.
3. Results
3.1 Social capital and firm performance3.1.1 Introduction to common terms characterizing social capital
Before the presentation of the contribution of social capital to firm performance, common terms used by scholars will be presented and explained. According to Aldrich (1989), analyzing networks requires two scopes, first personal networks and second social systems as networks.
The unit of analysis of personal networks consists of the entrepreneur and the all those people with whom he/she has direct relations, such as customers, suppliers, bankers, trade associations, family members etc. These personal networks can be divided into two categories, first direct ties and second indirect ties. Direct ties are those ties linking a person with other persons with whom he/she has direct dealings and from whom he/she can obtain services, advice and moral support. Two kinds of ties can directly connect the entrepreneur and other people; strong ties which are relations of trust such as family and friends and the opposite of direct ties is the weak ties which are usually formal acquaintances such as bankers and suppliers. Indirect ties are indirect connections between two persons (A and C) where a third person (B) mediates and has direct ties with the first two persons. Which means person A has direct relationship with the person B; person B has direct relationship with person C; thus person A has indirect connection with person C. “Indirect ties takes us closer to the essence of networks, as we begin to see how entrepreneurs can leverage their direct connections by judicious choice of contacts who have access to others” (Aldrich, 1989, p108).
Before the social system, as networks are analyzed there are also some very common terms used in the literature which should be analyzed as well. The first is the density of a network which is the number of ties that exist in this network. Some authors also include the strength of those ties in measuring the density. The second is reachability which is how many intermediaries exist in the path between an entrepreneur and the final connection. The third is the diversity, which is the the variety and the range of connection within a network system. More specifically, a personal network comprised by an entrepreneur’s strong ties is a high-density network with most persons knowing each other, while a personal network comprised by the entrepreneur’s weak ties is low-density network with many persons unknown to each other (Granovetter, 1973).
except for the concepts of density, reachability and diversity, the concepts of centrality, the broker roles and the bridge roles are included. Centrality of a person according to Aldrich (1989) “is determined by two factors: (1) the total distance from that person to all other persons following all paths leading outward from that person; and (2) the total number of other persons that person can reach.” (p. 111). The shorter the total distance and the more people who can be reached, the higher of centrality of an entrepreneur is. Concerning the broker roles of an entrepreneur, according to Aldrich (1989) p.112, “brokers are people who link persons having complementary interests, transferring information or resources, and otherwise facilitating the interests of persons not directly connected to one another”. Bridges are the action of the brokers. Brokers are the people who connect two indirect people, while bridges are the links between two regions of a network which otherwise would have little contact to each other or they might not have contact at all.
All the aforementioned concepts are ways to understand the difficulties and the opportunities an entrepreneur may encounter in the pursuit of his/her goals.
3.1.2 Bonding and Bridging ties
Having presented the main concepts of social capital, the relation between social capital and firm performance taking into account the bonding and bridging ties will follow.
The original definition of bonding social capital was given from Gittell & Vidal (1998) which is “the type of that brings closer together people who already know each other” (p.15), however the meaning and the usage has been changed with the use and popularity of this term. In the attempt to analyse the concept of bonding ties and in the same line with Gittell & Vidal (1998), someone can refer to Putnam’s words (2002, p.203) who said that “bonding social capital brings together people of similar sort”. According to Bourdieu (1986), Coleman (1990) and Putnam (1993) closure or density in social networks and relationships can provide advantages so an individual can increase social capital. These advantages can be gained because closure maintains and enhances trust, norms, authority, sanctions, etc (Coleman, 1990). Bonding ties are the most trusted and enduring relationships in the same network (Coleman, 1990; Ahuja, 2000; Steier & Greenwood, 2000). In the same line with the previous authors, Uzzi (1997) said that in an organization if there are a lot of relationships between the members of this organization, then there are bonding ties between them and these relationships are characterized by durability and they are based on trust. After the combination of the view of Uzzi (1997) and the view of Putnam (2002), the information, the sources of knowledge and the cognitions gained from the members of a network with bonding ties are similar; a fact that increases the redundancy in the available information (Granovetter, 1985) which may overlap. Despite this redundancy in available information, Coleman (1990) supports that due to this fact opportunistic behavior can be avoided. On the the other hand, there are some negative aspects of bonding ties; first of all, most of the times innovation is incremental (Gilsing et al.,2007) due to the fact that there are not new information among network. Secondly, according to Rosenkopf & Almeida (2003) business activities remain stable with a small possibility to change; therefore, the improvement of their performance is likely to remain small. Furthermore, according to Granovetter (1982), people with few weak ties will limit their connections to their close friends and they will be deprived of information from distant connections of the social system. All the aforementioned statements were the positive and negative impacts of having bonding ties to an organization.
On the other hand, by focusing only on bonding ties which are characterized by closure or density, someone might ignore the importance of bridges, weak ties and structural holes. Bridging ties are relationships relatively new by which an actor can access to different and new networks (Granovetter, 1985; Burt, 1992). According to Putnam (2002, p203), “bridging social capital refers to social networks that bring together people of different sorts”. Scholars such as Granovetter (1973) and Burt (1992) have addressed the importance of bridges in networks. They support that bridging ties, structural holes 1 and
weak ties are ways with which someone is able to facilitate information. Weak ties are the networks that
1The term of structural holes was introduced by Burt (1992), and he defined it as following; “structural
include several acquaintances and connections with distant business contact, such as banks (Granovetter, 1983). Bridging ties can facilitate the actor to access wider and diverse information which are possible to guide to new information flows, competitive capabilities (McEvily & Zaheer, 1999), and richer ideas (Burt, 1992). By evolving in bridging ties, an actor could be more aware of choosing the most promising ideas from the bulk of ideas since he/she has access to diverse information (Gargiulo & Benassi, 2000) which means that he/she is able to decrease the chances of failure (Powell et al., 1996; Rowley et al., 2000) and he/she can facilitate his/her growth performance (Baum et al., 2000). One of the drawbacks of bridging ties appears when bridging ties occurs; putting it simply, since bridging ties occurs when two otherwise disconnected networks are connected, which means that information and action may be different in the network, both actors from the two networks should understand and know how to act on information circulating in both networks, otherwise the bridging ties will not be successful (Obstfeld, 2005). All the aforementioned comments were the positive and negative aspects of being evolved in bridging ties.
Figure 1
Both bonding ties and bridging ties can affect positively the firm performance according to the literature (Adler & Kwon, 2002). One of the questions in this Thesis though, is if the gender can affect the kind of ties and under which circumstances. This will be answered later in the Thesis.
3.2 Gender Diversity and Firm Performance
negative outcomes such as decrease in group cohesion (Smith et al., 1994) and increase in group conflict (Jehn, 1995).
One of the main streams of firm diversity supports that both women and men in the board can increase performance benefits (Adams & Ferreira, 2009). Based on upper echelon theory, Wiersema & Bantel (1992) supported that the more diverse the demographic traits, the more diverse information, sources and perspective can be held, as well as innovative ideas. Upper echelon theory will be explained later in this chapter. Furthermore, Watson et al. (1993) and Pelled et al. (1999) found that diversity improves decision making and creative problem solving. These are some of the findings in the literature which support the positive effect of gender diversity on firm performance.
On the other hand, authors from another stream such us Jehn (1995), found negative outcomes from diversity. More specific he found that diversity increases group conflicts. Other researchers studying the outcomes of diversity found more negative aspects of diversity. To be more specific, previous studies, such as the one of Tsui & O’Reilly (1989) and Tsui et al. (1992), found that the relationship between diversity and interpersonal liking, psychological commitment and intergroup commitment is inversely proportional. Moreover, Smith et al. (1994) found negative relationship between diversity and group cohesion. All the aforementioned statements are some fundings in the literature about the negative impact of gender. However, the focus of this Thesis will be limited in the relation between gender diversity and firm performance, which is one of the main fields scholars have paid much attention.
The second theory, resource dependency theory, perceives the firm as dependent on the environment and external organizations (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Given this assumption an organization needs linkages which link the organization with the external environment. Men and women acquire different networks with different information. Also, women may provide different benefits to the firm since they have different resources, skills, competence and knowledge in comparison with men (Hillman et al., 2007). Since women have different external resources from men as they have different relations and different attitudes to the environment (will be explained in the next chapter), they can improve the external resources of an organization; as a result, the position of the organization can be improved as well. Again, this doesn’t mean that women are better than men, but since women can access a different external networks which men may wouldn’t be able to access, they can provide some resources otherwise not accessible. Having a combination of both genders in the board could be better concerning the organization’s performance than having only one.
Another theory extremely common in the literature which can explain the importance of gender diversity in an organization is the upper echelon theory. Hambrick & Mason (1984) introduce this theory supporting that the characteristics of top management such as age, background, education, tenure, etc. influence the decisions of managers; this means that the decisions taken in the organization can be influenced by the characteristics of the managers. A greater demographic diversity in the management members of an organization influences the decision making and affects the firm performance positively. There have been many studies testing the link between gender diversity and firm performance with many of them finding positive results (e.g., Lee & Farh, 2004; Erchardt, et al., 2003). According to findings, diversity is important for an organization since it can contribute to greater knowledge, creativity and innovation, all of which contribute to the increase of the competitive advantage of the organization (Watson et al., 1993). Generally, many authors argue that diversity provides an organization with positive performance (Smith et al.,1994; Carpenter,2002; Greening & Johnson, 1996). Again here, using the upper echelon theory the importance of the gender diversity can be explained.
gender diversity has positive influence in firm performance owing to the variety of reasons described above.
Figure 2
Due to the fact of those diverse results, scholars have suggested that mediators or interventions should be examined in order to uncover the ways and the circumstances under which diversity can affect the firm performance (Milliken & Martins, 1996). In this Thesis, social capital will be a mediator of this relationship and the reasoning for this relationship will be explained. The reason why social capital was chosen to be the mediator is the huge importance of social capital in firm performance as has already been explained in previous sections.
3.3 Gender diversity and social capital
In this section the relationship between gender and social capital will be discussed. Firstly, some generals differences between men and women found in the literature will be presented. Later, based on theories, the impact of gender on social capital will be explained. Finally, some contingencies based on the following analysis will be presented.
through their husbands. The reasoning behind these findings is that due to family responsibilities women do not have such a diverse network; as a result, it can be inferred that women do not have a strong and diverse network as men, since men’s family responsibilities do not influence their relationships so much.
Many authors have supported that women rely on emotional work behavior which means that not only do women take into account their feelings and their emotions in the working environment but also, they care about the wellbeing of others in the working place (e.g., Hochschild, 1983). This means that due to the emotional work behavior women are more involved in strong ties than men. In contrast, men enjoy their power and their authority to dominate in social relationships. In the same line with Hochschild (1983), Gilligan (1982) supports that women in a taken situation will consider what all the parties gain and what they lose and then they will make a decision giving a lot of weight in affective considerations; on the other hand, in the same situation men will see what they can personally gain from this and will not give so much weight in affective consideration. According to this statement, women will pay attention to their feelings when they supposed to take an entrepreneurial decision, while men may not. Aldrich (1989), concludes that “women may view social relationships in slightly different light than men, placing more emphasis on responsibilities and obligations” (p.125).
Bourdieu (1984), supported that women have less social resources than men and this might be one of the reasons why women have difficulty in obtaining senior organizational positions in a firm. Moreover, later on, Burt (1998) supported that women may face legitimacy and credibility problems in a firm, but he also presented a different perspective of Bourdieu (1984) saying that women might have similar networks in comparison with men but the effect of their activities may differ. In the same line with the previous authors Lin (2001) supported that women deal with a lot of difficulties in acquisition of social capital, belief which also supports Burt’s (1998) argument about legitimacy. Also, in their study, Metz & Tharenou (2001) claimed that the most important barriers that women face in their career progress is gender discrimination.
However, the aforementioned findings do not explain the kind of relationship someone is more likely to use; bonding or bridging ties. In the following part based on theories, some dimensions of these theories will be used in order to explain the types of ties that both sexes use. The theories used are the following: social identity (homophily), human capital, social feminist theory, and relational theory.
3.3.1 Social Identity (Homophily)
of homophily. Homophily is the tendency of a person to be connected with people who have similar characteristics as he/she. These characteristics could be the ethnicity, gender, age, religion, education, occupation etc. Thus, gender homophily is the tendency of a person to connect with people who have the same gender as them. Generally, there are two reasons supporting the theory of homophily; the first is the similarity-attraction hypothesis by Byrne (1971) which predicts that people who have similar traits are more likely to interact with each other, and the second is the theory of self-categorization by Turner (1987) which describes that people tend to self-categorize themselves and others in groups with similar traits such as race, gender, age, etc. There are many empirical researches which support the idea of gender homophily such Ibarra (1992) and Leenders (1996). McPherson et al. (2001) in their study about homophily in social networks have provided many insights. The following arguments is based on their study. Numerous studies have tested gender homophily in the life stages from young children’s relationships (Eder & Hallinan, 1978) to working relationships (Ibarra, 1992,1995). Regarding children’s relationships, it has been proved that girls have a tendency to be involved in smaller and homophilous groups, compared with boys who are involved in larger and heterogeneous groups, however, as they are moving to adolescence stage this tendency is decreasing (Shrum et al.,1988). Concerning working relationships, studies have proved that being in a group or in an establishment, gender homophily is created (South et al., 1982, 1983; McPherson & Smith-Lovin 1986,1987). Also, according to Ibarra (1992), communication between similar persons is more likely to occur, due to the fact that similarity between two people increases the predictability of their behavior and decreases communication comprehension. Summarizing the study of McPherson et al. (2001), after analyzing homophily taking into account the ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and education, they concluded that male social networks tend to be larger, more diverse and richer in resources comparing with female social networks which are smaller and they are related to kin ties. To conclude, homophily is a way to support the idea that social networks are influenced by gender, since men and women will move to different social circles and they will create different relationships.
involved mainly in women social activities while men are more likely to be involved both in men’s and women’s activities, resulting in the fact that men have more wide network than women. Having different types of networks naturally can affect the social capital of a person. Previous literature suggests that this natural tendency of women to participate in homophilous networks can result in women having stronger ties within a dense network than men (Cromie & Birley, 1992; Katz & Williams, 1997; Starr & Yudkin, 1996). On the other hand, the tendency of men to participate in heterogenous network can result in men having more weak and diverse ties (Cromie & Birley, 1992; Katz & Williams, 1997; Starr & Yudkin, 1996).
Furthermore, one of the most common topics in the studies of homophily, is the connection between homophily and kin ties. Women have the tendency to have more homophilous networks in terms of kin ties than men (Marsden, 1987; Moore, 1990). Moreover, they tend to prefer closer relations when they want to discuss something important (Marsden, 1987; Moore, 1990). According to McPherson & Smith-Lovin (1987), both statements can be explained by the phenomenon of homophily. The tendency of people to contact with people with the same background is higher for women and more specifically between women and kin. However, kin ties are usually in the same network. According to Granovetter (1973), people who have contacts in different networks, have greater access to resources and information, both of which are essential for a firm. Since kin ties are involved in the same network, it is less likely for a person involved only in this network to have a greater access to resources and information comparing with a person involved both in kin and nonkin ties (Fischer & Oliker; 1983, Moore, 1990). The tendency of women to involve in family networks is more likely to create redundant contacts which could be nonunique, because these contacts lead to the same people who provide the same information (Burt, 1992), while nonredundant contacts provide new information which can be beneficial (Burt, 1997). Family members are more likely to share the same information and resources and if a person’s network consists mainly of kin members then this person is in disadvantageous position in terms of business community. The fact that women are more likely to have kin ties than men is one way to explain the difference of social capital between men and women.
which have access to diverse sources of information and they can provide new knowledge about a topic such as engineering or technology.
Taking into account the aforementioned findings, one of the main contribution of this Thesis has emerged based on homophily and the social identity theory. Having a greater proportion of strong ties than weak ties, a woman can contribute to an organization by bringing bonding ties, while having a greater proportion of weak ties than strong ties, men can contribute to an organization by bringing bridging ties. Furthermore, based on the connection between homophily and kin ties, having a great proportion of kin ties, a woman can contribute to the development of social capital of the organization by bringing a great proportion of bonding ties. Since kin ties can be included in the family, they are also considered as bonding ties. Thus, in comparison with men, women are more likely to have great proportion of bonding ties. Also, it can be said that social capital is affected by gender.
3.3.2 Human capital
Human capital theory is another way in order to explain the differences in social capital between men and women. Human capital is the cumulative stocks of education, skills, and experience, and capabilities that an individual acquires and can benefit both the individual and his/her organization (Becker, 1964). Traditionally women have made fewer investments in education and in experience than men (Tharenou et al., 1994). Westphal & Milton (2000) also found that it is less likely for women to have director experiences comparing with men. Furthermore, women lack sufficient human capital for board positions (Burke, 2000). These are some examples to confirm that men and women have differences in human capital. However, human capital is also connected to social capital. In this Thesis, only the two dimensions of human capital, which are the working experience and education of a person, will be analyzed in order to explain how they can affect social capital.
second reason, which is connected with the social capital of this person, is that by keeping these connections after he/she leaves from the prior organization, he/she can always ask for their opinion or for their help in the future. By doing so, this person uses the connection of prior job in order to gain useful information for the current organization. To conclude, having prior working experience similar as the current job not only can affect the human capital of the individual and the current organization but also it increases the social capital of this person. Here something important should be mentioned. The connections and the relationships acquired by previous working experience are more essential for the individual in comparison with other kinds of relationships, such as friends or family, which may be irrelevant to working as a manager in an organization. Previous working connections are relevant to the organization and they can provide more relevant and accurate information about the organization comparing with unrelated relationships such as friends and family.
Secondly, the education acquired by a person is also considered as human capital (Ucbasaran et al., 2008; Lazear, 2004). Having an education background, a person can not only increase the strength of his/her knowledge but also the social capital. In the educational environment, an individual can meet other people who might share at least one interest with him/her which is the subject of what they are studying. This could mean that the majority of these people are going to follow similar careers. Taking this into consideration, in the future they can have access to information and networks similar to each other; networks that have result from their working environment and they are relevant with their jobs, not general networks. These networks are essential for everyone because keeping connections with his/her classmates, a person can access to his/her classmates network and by extension he/she can broaden his/her network by adding the network of his/her classmates to his/her network. This network extension of this person is also essential for the organization that he/she currently works since those connections and networks will directly be relevant with the organization. Thus, having been educated an individual acquires connections essential not only for him/her but also for the organization since these connections are directly relevant. This means that education not only increases the human capital acquired by a person but also the social capital. As with prior working experience, the connections acquired by a person from his/her education, are more important than his/her connections with family and friends since they are more relevant with the organization and they can provide more relevant and accurate information.
organization, it does not mean that a woman has less social capital. She may have the same proportion of social capital with men but it is more likely to connect with people relevant to the family, friends, extracurricular activities, etc. Having these kinds of connections, a woman can increase strong ties through her network. Thus, one of the contributions of this Thesis has emerged which suggest that women are more likely to have bonding ties based on the human capital theory and findings. On the other hand, due to the fact that it is more possible for men to have higher human capital, they are more likely to have more relevant social capital for an organization. Therefore, men are more likely to contribute to an organization by bringing bridging ties than women. To conclude, gender can affect social capital through human capital which finally affect firm performance.
3.3.3 Social Feminist Theory
case for the endurance of a relationship. Due to their different way of thinking, women and men can keep a relationship or not based on what they have been taught. These examples can apply in social capital of an organization as well. Thinking differently, a man can make connections with the external environment which in case of a woman cannot happen due to the fact that she uses different ways of approaching and creating connections. Also, the opposite could occur. Considering any relationship in this way, one can conclude that different kinds of connections can be hired from a man and from a woman, resulting in different social capital in an organization.
Following this theory, it can be said that there are differences between genders, so there are different attitudes concerning dealing with social capital between the two sexes. However, one of the main contributions of this Thesis is that the connection between gender and the type of ties (bridging or bonding) that each gender is more likely to use cannot be predict through this theory. Thus, following this theory it can be concluded that due to different socialization process, women and men can affect differently the social capital of the firm which ultimately affect the firm performance.
3.3.4 Relational theory
According to the relational theory, a major necessity of humans is to establish connections with other people. The development of this theory has results in many dimensions. Miller (1976) introduced the differences in the relationship between men and women, theorizing that especially for women one of the most important sense is to create connections. Building in relational theory, Chodorow (1978) supports that women’s connections are based on the original relation that they had with their mother, whereas men separate from their mothers and they want to be autonomous. Based on this theory, Gilligan (1982) brings one more dimension in the literature in which women make decisions by taking into consideration the wellbeing of others and involving others. Thus, according to the relational theory, two dimensions can be derived.
how this relationship can affect the wellbeing of their group, while for men it may be less likely to think about that. This different decision of building or keeping a relationship between men and women can also affect social capital. For instance, a woman employee may have a relationship in which some conflicts have arisen, but she knows that by keeping these connections she can positively affect the firm. Then, in this case, she may keep this connection putting her opinion in the second place and helping the organization by absorbing the positive parts of this relationship. In the same case, if instead of woman there was a man, then it would be less likely for this man to act in the same way, because it would be less likely to consider the wellbeing of others and put his opinion in second place. The same situation can occur in the event of building a relationship. Thus, having different attitudes and ways in keeping and building relationships, men and women can bring different types of social capital in an organization.
As with the social feminist theory, according to the relational theory it can be proved that gender can affect social capital but it is difficult to specify what kind of ties (bonding or bridging) women or men are more likely to use. Thus, according to the relational theory, it can be concluded that making different decisions on which relationship to keep or not, women can affect differently social capital which ultimately affect the firm performance.
3.3.5 Summarizing
Theory Dimension Impact of Gender Types of Social Capital Social identity Family ties Higher in women Bonding ties
Lower in men Bridging ties
Homophily Higher in women Bonding ties
Lower in men Bridging ties Human capital Social capital Lower in women Bonding ties Higher in men Bridging ties Social Feminist
theory
Different Socialization Process
Relational theory Different Decision Making
Table 1
While through the social identity theory and the human capital theory, the types of ties (bonding or bridging) that ultimately affect firm performance can be explained, through the social feminist theory and the relational theory this is not possible. However, the last two theories are necessary to conceptually develop the direct influence of gender on social capital which ultimately affect firm performance. According to the social feminist theory, men and women show different ways of thinking and different socialization processes. This difference can affect directly the social capital which ultimately affects firm performance. According to relational theory men and women use different decision making processes which can affect their relationships and the social capital which finally affect firm performance.
The overall result of this Thesis is that women are more likely to use bonding ties than men, which ultimately affects firm performance. These findings hinge basically on the social identity theory and the human capital theory. Then, through the social feminist theory and the relational theory, the direct relationship between gender and social capital can be explained.
Conceptual Model
A brief description of the conceptual model will follow. Gender affects the level of family ties, homogeneity in the relationship, and human capital -in terms of education and work experience- that a person may have. Moreover, gender can affect the socialization process and the decision making of a person. All the aforementioned impact the social capital. Thus, considering these explanations it can be conclude as the main contribution of this conceptual model that social capital is the mechanism through which gender diversity impacts firm performance.
3.3.6 Contingencies
Through this Thesis the author aims to create a conceptual model presenting the relationship between gender, social capital, and firm performance; however, in this section some contingencies of this conceptual model will be presented. Concluding that women are more likely to have more bonding ties than men does not mean that this fact is negative. In many cases, having bonding ties in the majority of one's relationships is a positive fact. There are organizations which need more bonding ties than bridging ties. For the majority of the organizations there should be a balance between bonding and bridging ties depending on several reasons, such as the target of the organization, the type, the size, and the sector. An analysis will follow taking into account the aforementioned categories as contingencies.
Thus, in this case, men may be more suitable to this organization than women. In contrast, in an organization whose target is to stay stable at the current position, bonding ties may be more suitable. This is because, the organization would like to develop relationships of trust and to be connected with its clients. In order to succeed it, the organization should use the bonding ties. Thus, in this case, women may be more suitable than men in this kind of organization.
Taking into account the type of the organization, meaning if it is profit or nonprofit organization, or if it is a volunteering organization or not, in case of a non-profit organization or volunteering organization, bonding ties may be more relevant. This is why, in this kind of organizations, one of the most important things is the role of the feelings both from the side of the organization and from the side of the client. Usually in these organizations the main product or service is connected with some social events. People involved in this kind of organization are usually emotionally bound with what they do. Thus, these people need bonding ties in order to keep them involved. Since women are more likely to use bonding ties, this kind of organization may be better to recruit more women than men. Also, it has been proved that women are more likely to volunteer than men, which can be explained by what it mentioned above. On the other hand, in case of a profit organization neither bonding nor bridging ties can be explained. In this case a balance of these ties may be the most appropriate because both are needed in order to have a profit.
Taking into account the size of the organization, it can be claimed that the larger the organization is, the more bridging ties are suitable. This happens because, since a large firm has a large network, it is difficult for this firm to have close relationship with all the members of this network. Most of these relationships are bridging ties which the firm uses in order to gain access to several information needed. On the other hand, the network of a small firm is small as well; as a result, it is more likely that the relationships with the members of this network will be close related and using bonding ties. Also in a small firm trust is needed and it can be provided by bonding ties. Thus, in large organizations, men may be more suitable than women and in small firms women may be more suitable than men.
The aforementioned analysis includes some examples of categories that the use of the types of relationships differ. There much more examples and categories that could be elaborated but it is out of the scope of this Thesis. However, future researchers should research in depth all these contingencies and they may find a model in which specific types of ties are needed in specific cases. Also, researchers might find a pattern in which they can indicate the specific amount of bonding and bridging ties needed in specific cases by using the conceptual model of this Thesis.
4. Conclusion
Based on the extant literature, the aim of this Thesis was to develop a conceptual model in which the relationships between social capital and gender are theoretically investigated in order to explain firm performance. After an analysis of social capital and gender differences, the author developed a conceptual model based on theories about these phenomena. Using the theories of human capital and social identity, the results were that women are more likely to use bonding ties than men and men are more likely to use bridging ties than women. Using the social feminist theory and the relational theory, it is possible to theoretically ground the association between on how gender may affect social capital – but it is not possible to describe what kind of ties each gender is more likely to use. Despite the fact that gender affects directly firm performance, the main result of this Thesis is that this relationship can mediated by social capital. Using the aforementioned theories, it can be said that except for the direct relationship between social capital and firm performance and the direct relationship between gender and firm performance, the connection through which gender affects social capital ultimately influences firm performance.
about these topics and create targeted policies. Finally, women entrepreneurs and employees may find this Thesis interesting due to the fact they can gain information about the average downside of women, the differences that they may have compared with men and the way they can improve their attitude in order to become better entrepreneurs and employees.
This Thesis was limited by two main barriers. Time constraints was the first and the most important barrier. The number of the articles and papers found in the literature was large; as a result, the time was not sufficient. Thus, the findings were filtered by a strict filtering process reducing the number of data to 97 articles and 17 books. A greater time limit would be helpful because more papers could have been studied so the author could gain information which might be missing. Reading more paper insights and more information in depth could be gained and it could provide in-depth analysis. Moreover, it could allow a deeper review of sociology and psychology literature which could enhance the results of this Thesis and provide deeper and more comprehensive explanations of the results. The second limitation of this Thesis was the budget. Since there was no budget to complete this Thesis, the technique used in order to find relevant papers may not be complete. According to Crossan & Apaydin (2010), the method that produces the best results in such a systematic literature review is to employ a panel of experts on the topics, because they are able to identify relevant papers easier than others. The lack of budget prevented the use of this method, so it resulted in limited findings. Therefore, the combination of the lack of budget and time constraints limited the number of findings.
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