The Reproduction of Social Capital in a Learning Organization.

Bringing together the ideas from Marx's and Bourdieu's institutional treatments of capital and Feld's theory of focused organization of social ties, we explore the circulation of social capital through learning as the mechanism of its reproduction in an educational setting. We assess the magnitude of this phenomenon in a particular case of a year-long executive education program for senior managers of a large Russian bank and test the conditions under which it is more likely to occur. An empirical analysis shows that joint learning activities are important in the reproduction of social capital. Their importance increases as learning activities become more constraining: the more joint engagement in learning is required, the more likely a social tie to form, which is consistent with Feld's theory. As a complement to Feld, we argue theoretically and confirm empirically that joint exogenous engagement in learning is as important for the maintenance of a preexisting tie as for the formation of a new one in the case of a highconstraining educational focus. On contrary, a low-constraining educational focus has a smaller effect on the maintenance of preexisting ties than on the creation of new ones. Additional analysis shows that the difference is due to the propensity of preexisting ties to focus themselves around a variety of other joint activities when the activities imposed by the educational focus are voluntary. We discuss theoretical and empirical implications of these findings for research on the reproduction of social capital in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]