Abstract

Social capital and social networks explain the benefits and structure of patterns of social interaction among a number of actors. Integrating these concepts can explain how a business organization can provide the basis for reciprocal exchange among a number of actors, as well as the basis for civic engagement In the community as a whole. A business organization can generate these effects when it becomes the focal actor in a particular pattern of social interaction. We call this pattem for reciprocal exchange and civic engagement that arises around a focal actor - a social capital network. This analysis is applied to identify and explain how a network of reciprocity and civic engagement arose in Brooklyn during the 1930s-1950s around the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team and its ballpark, Ebbets Field.