Building Social Capital for Social Entrepreneurship

Abstract

By entrepreneurial combinations of voluntary resources, project means from public and private sources, commissions on contracts and other ways of financing, the youth house Fryshuset, with a great number of social activities for primarily young people in Stockholm, Sweden, has been able to allocate resources for establishing and expanding its activities. This development would not have been possible without struggle against established norms, values, traditions and institutions, not least the 'close to monopoly' that the public sector in practice was having on the fields in which Fryshuset emerged. Step by step, Fryshuset has built partnerships and alliances with public, private as well as civil actors. Expressed in a general way, Fryshuset has built a new social capital and created new norms and values. The aim of the paper is to investigate how Fryshuset has managed to build social capital through, and for entrepreneurial efforts aiming to facilitate young peoples' development. Construcción del capital social por el empresariado socialLa casa de jóvenes Fryshuset, que desarrolla un gran número de actividades sociales para los jóvenes de Estocolmo (Suecia), ha sido capaz de captar recursos para asentar y extender sus actividades a través de conglomerados empresariales de recursos benévolos, de medios procedentes de fuentes públicas y privadas, de comisiones de contratos y de otras fuentes de financiación. Este desarrollo no habría sido posible sin combatir las normas establecidas, valores, tradiciones e instituciones, sin contar el cuasimonopolio

A Network-based view of regional growth

“…While social capital is essentially a place-based social network phenomenon (Capello and Faggian, 2005;Westlund and Bolton, 2003;Rutten et al 2010) rooted in theories of physical proximity, and dense matrices of social relations (Lorenzen, 2007), network capital is less spatially bounded in its dimensions, encompassing to a greater extent the value of networks formed in a global environment, whereby interactions are increasingly flexible, dynamic and ephemeral (Monge and Contractor, 2003). For instance, the concept of 'temporary clusters', whereby strategic network building occurs through conferences, trade fairs, exhibitions and the like, highlights the importance of network capital and access to knowledge through global pipelines Bathelt and Schuldt, 2008;Power and Jansson, 2008;Torré, 2008;Rinallo and Golfetto, 2011;Schuldt and Bathelt, 2011).…”

Bourdieuian approaches to the geography of entrepreneurial cultures

“…Because social networks are densest locally, stories of new practices spread quickly within communities. This is particularly true for entrepreneurs, who tend to know many other proximate entrepreneurs and discuss business issues with them (Westlund and Bolton, 2003). Entrepreneurs who are constantly scanning their local environment for new opportunities are primed to observe changes in the local field and experiment with new practices that they think will now be successful.…”

“…Within this literature, 'regional' or 'local' is frequently defined as a metropolitan area: a contiguous labourshed with a cohesive economy. Entrepreneurs largely draw on local resources as they start and grow thing firm, be it venture capital (Sorenson and Stewart, 2001), mentorship , or knowledge and support obtained through their social networks (Westlund and Bolton, 2003). Therefore, the provision of all of these resources will be affected by local cultural norms, such as how 'respectable' entrepreneurship is compared to traditional employment or the social consequences of business failure .…”

Creative capacity for sustainable development: a comparative analysis of the European and Turkish rural regions

“…Basically, entrepreneurship does not refer only to the entrepreneur as an individual but as a change agent in an environment and it is very much related to the notions of social capital, human capital and networks (Noteboom, 1999;Cooke, 2002;Elfring and Hulsink, 2003;Westlund and Bolton, 2003). The rural economy is very much related to entrepreneurship/self-employment (van Leeuwen and Nijkamp, 2006), but rural local employment suffers to be allocated inside the region and also from the lack of education possibilities.…”