Rethinking social capital measurement

International audienceSocial capital is decisive to many of strategic objectives of organizations. Although it has been extensively defined in the literature, social capital continues to be discussed in particular concerning its measurement. What is the usability of the existing indicators of social capital? How do managers decide which one they would prefer? An overview of the literature reveals that there are very few measurements of social capital and those which have already developed are very complex. Direct measurements appear to provide a better understanding of the complexity of relationships than aggregated measurements. Yet, we show that they are of unsatisfactory quality. Using simple counter-examples, we advance that they give rise to contradictions. From this discussion and using Graph Theory, we propose two complementary indicators of social capital which we call “relational strength” and “relational potential”. These operational indicators can be handled by any actors to position themselves within their social sphere