Giacomo Degli Antoni

A Theoretical Analysis of the Relationship between Social Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility: Concepts and Definitions

Trust, trustworthiness and ethical norms of reciprocity and cooperation have been receiving more and more attention in economic analysis. In particular, two concepts have been widely used in order to study the socio-economic effects of these factors: the concept of social capital (hereafter also SC) and of corporate social responsibility (hereafter also CSR). Even though SC and CSR seem to be linked by many common elements related to the quality and quantity of social relations between agents, their relationship has not been deeply investigated yet. This paper is aimed at shedding light on some aspects of this relationship, in particular, by investigating the idea of a virtuous circle, between the level of SC and the implementation of CSR practices, that fosters socio-economic development by generating social inclusion and social networks based on trust and trustworthiness. Following the literature on SC that stresses its multidimensional character (e.g. Paldam 2000), we consider two dimensions of this notion. Starting from the distinction introduced by Uphoff (1999), we take into account a cognitive and a structural idea of SC. The first one essentially refers to the dispositional characters of agents that affect their propensity to behave in different ways. The latter refers to social networks connecting agents. With regard to the concept of CSR, we adopt a contractarian approach and consider CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firms stakeholders. Among stakeholders, we distinguish between strong and weak stakeholders. Both these two categories have made specific investments in the firm. However, strong stakeholders are precious for the firm because they bring in strategic assets. They are, for example, skilled workers or institutional investors. On the contrary, weak stakeholders do not bring strategic assets into the firm and firms have material incentives at defecting in the relationship with them. They are, for example, unskilled workers. Considering the notions of cognitive and structural SC and a contractarian approach to CSR, we show that: a) the level of cognitive SC plays a key role in inducing the firm to adopt and observe CSR practices that respect all the stakeholders; b) the decision of adopting formal instruments of CSR contributes to create cognitive SC that is endogenously determined in the model; c) the level of cognitive SC and the decision of adopting CSR practices creates structural SC in terms of a long term relationship between the firm and the weak and strong stakeholders.

Modeling Cognitive Social Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as Preconditions for Sustainable Networks of Relations

The paper studies the relationship between social capital (SC) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by investigating the idea of a virtuous circle between the level of SC and the implementation of CSR standard of behaviour that favours the creation of cooperative networks between the firm and all its stakeholders by promoting the spread of social norms of trust and cooperation. Multidimensionality of social capital (Uphoff 1999, Paldam 2000) is accounted in terms of cognitive and structural SC. The first refers to dispositional characters of agents that affect their propensity to behave in conformity with social norms, whereas the latter consists of social networks connecting agents. With regard to the concept of CSR, we adopt a contractarian approach and consider CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on fiduciary duties owed to all the firms stakeholders. Among stakeholders, we distinguish between strong and weak stakeholders. Both of them are locked into a relation with the firm by specific investments. While, however, cooperation with strong stakeholders is a long run equilibrium for the firm, on the contrary, in the relations with weak stakeholders the firm face material incentives to defect from cooperation with them. By joint use of the tools of network analysis and psychological game theory, the paper shows the role of cognitive SC and CSR in promoting the emergence of cooperative networks between the firm and all its stakeholders (structural SC). In particular, (a) the level of cognitive SC, in terms of community or society-wide disposition to comply with fair social norms, plays a key role in providing opportunities for the firm to agree (with strong stakeholders) on CSR principles and hence to induce incentives to comply with them. (b) The explicit agreement on CSR principles and norms engenders cognitive social capital on its own. It does so by creating room for conformist preferences that exploit beliefs of mutual conformity and dispositions to conform. Moreover, the agreement on CSR principles by itself positively affects beliefs about reciprocal conformity on the part of the firm and its strong stakeholders. (c) The level of cognitive social capital (both beliefs and dispositions) and the decision to adopt CSR principles generate structural social capital understood as long-term cooperative relationships between the firm and its stakeholders, even though, on considering the material payoffs characterizing the single relationships, the firm would have no incentive to cooperate with weak stakeholders. Alongside the notion of sub game prefect equilibria and credible threats, we show that strong stakeholders endowed with high cognitive social capital, have an incentive in punishing the firm if it is not cooperative with weak stakeholders. The sanction may induce the firm to cooperate with weak stakeholders as well, and it generates cooperative networks that would not be sustainable without the power of the sanction.

Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Behaviour and Performance

Introduction Lorenzo Sacconi and Giacomo Degli Antoni PART I: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THEECONOMIC THEORY OF INSTITUTIONS, INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCES AND SOCIAL NORMS A Plea for Unconventional Economics Bruno S. Fey A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (III): Conformism, Equilibrium Refinement and Selection Lorenzo Sacconi Trustful Banking: A Psychological Game-Theoretical Model of Fiduciary Interactions in Micro-credit Programs Vittorio Pelligra The Relationship Between Competition and Trust: An Essay in an Historical and Theoretical Perspective Sergio Beraldo and Gilberto Turati PART II: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A GAME THEORETICAL AND NETWORK ANALYSIS APPROACH Linking Economic and Social-Exchange Games: From the Community Norm to CSR Masahiko Aoki Social Capital in Networks of Relations Steffen Lippert Modeling Cognitive Social Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility as Preconditions for Sustainable Networks of Relations Giacomo Degli Antoni and Lorenzo Sacconi PART III: THE EOCNOMIC EFFECT OF SOCIAL CAPITAL AND OTHER REGARDING PREFERENCES: EXPERIMENTAL AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE Social Distance, Cooperation and Other-regarding Preferences: A New Approach Based on the Theory of Relational Goods Leonardo Becchetti, Giacomo Degli Antoni and Marco Faillo Generalized Trust: An Experimental Perspective Gianluca Grimalda and Luigi Mittone Testing the Distributive Effects of Social Enterprises: The Case of Italy Carlo Borzaga, Sara Depedri and Ermanno Tortia PART IV: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: THE MACRO APPROACH Social Assets, Technical Progress and Long-Run Welfare Stefano Bartolini and Luigi Bonatti Generalized Trust: The Macro Perspective Martin Paldam The Local Path to Sustainable Development: Social Capital in Naples Raffaella Nanetti, Robert Leonardi and Catalina Holguin

Groups and trust: Experimental evidence on the Olson and Putnam hypotheses

Mancur Olson and Robert Putnam provide two conflicting views on the effect of involvement with voluntary associations on their members. Putnam argues that associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity and public spiritedness. Olson emphasizes the tendency of groups to pursue private interests and lobby for preferential policies. We carry out the first field experiment involving a sample of members of different association types from different age groups and education levels, as well as a demographically comparable sample of non-members. This enables us to examine the differential patterns of behavior followed by members of Putnam-type and Olson-type associations. Coherently with both the Putnams and Olsons view, we find that members of Putnam-type (Olson-type) associations display more (no more) generalized trust than non-members. However, when we examine trustworthy behavior we find the opposite pattern, with members of Olson-type (Putnam-type) associations more (no more) trustworthy than non-members. No systematic effect for the intensity of participation in associations emerges. We analyze the issue of self-selection through a structural equation model. This supports the view that membership has a significant effect on prosociality.

Disentangling the relationship between nonprofit and social capital: the role of social cooperatives and social welfare associations in the development of networks of strong and weak ties

We use a unique dataset to study how participation in two specific types of nonprofit organizations, i.e. social welfare associations and social cooperatives, affects individual social capital. A descriptive analysis shows that both the types of organization have a positive impact. The econometric analysis reveals that social welfare associations play a significantly greater role in the development of volunteers’ networks of cooperative relationships, favouring the creation of weak ties which are used to exchange information and advice, and offering the opportunity to establish stronger ties entailing concrete mutual support. Within social cooperatives, workers develop their individual social capital to a greater extent than volunteers.

The economic value of a meeting: Evidence from an investment game experiment

The decrease of social distance between subjects and between subjects and experimenters facilitates the deviation from purely selfish behavior in different experimental contexts. Even though the effects of social distance reduction are widely documented, little is known about subjects’ preferences for anonymity, and in particular about the willingness to remove it if they are given the opportunity. In a variant of the investment game we give players the opportunity to decrease the social distance and investigate three main issues: a) how many subjects decide to remove anonymity when this is allowed; b) how this choice is associated with their behavior in the game; c) why should rational subjects opt for removing anonymity. Evidence shows that a significant number of subjects (43.5%) expects to obtain a positive utility by meeting their counterpart and they are ready to risk and/or lose money to get this utility.

Social Distance, Cooperation and Other-regarding Preferences: A New Approach Based on the Theory of Relational Goods

The paper is divided in six sections. In the second section we provide a short survey of the literature on relational goods. In the third section we describe the experimental design of the two experiments presented in Becchetti et al. (2007) and Becchetti, Degli Antoni and Faillo (2009) (hereafter also B2007 and B2009). In the fourth section we discuss the hypotheses on the effect of relational goods on players’ behaviour in the two experiments. In the fifth section we discuss the main findings. The sixth section concludes.

The emergence of social enterprises through the initiative of self-organized citizens: an analysis starting from Olson's approach to the logic of collective action

ABSTRACT This article provides indirect empirical evidence with which to verify whether the logic of collective action maintained by Olson represents a sound theoretical approach to social enterprises. Our hypothesis is that, if a positive effect of participation in social enterprises on pro-social attitudes of members exists, when considering these organizations we should move from the approach proposed by Olson to the one proposed by Putnam, in the Tocqueville tradition. Overall, the existing empirical and experimental evidence seems to suggest that Putnams approach to voluntary organizations is better able than Olsons to capture the organizational behavior of social enterprises, confirming that initiatives by self-organized citizens should be considered a possible convincing explanation for their emergence.ABSTRACTThis article provides indirect empirical evidence with which to verify whether the logic of collective action maintained by Olson represents a sound theoretical approach to social enterprises. Our hypothesis is that, if a positive effect of participation in social enterprises on pro-social attitudes of members exists, when considering these organizations we should move from the approach proposed by Olson to the one proposed by Putnam, in the Tocqueville tradition. Overall, the existing empirical and experimental evidence seems to suggest that Putnams approach to voluntary organizations is better able than Olsons to capture the organizational behavior of social enterprises, confirming that initiatives by self-organized citizens should be considered a possible convincing explanation for their emergence.

Voluntary Associations and Trustworthiness: An Empirical Examination at Italian Regional Level

This essay studies the level of trustworthiness across Italian regions in relation to three variables: membership in cultural and recreational associations; membership in ecological, civil rights and peace associations; unpaid participation in voluntary service associations (solidarity associations). Two main results emerge: a positive and significant effect of unpaid participation in solidarity associations on the regional level of trustworthiness, and a negative, if not always significant, effect of membership in environmental associations. Furthermore, it is unpaid labour of solidarity associations that crucially contributes to the creation of propitious conditions for the diffusion of trustworthy behaviour throughout the community.

Spectators Versus Stakeholders With/Without Information: The Difference it Makes for Justice

We document that being spectators (no effect on personal payoffs) and, to a lesser extent, stakeholders without information on relative payoffs, induces subjects who can choose distribution criteria after task performance to prefer rewarding talent (vis a vis effort, chance or strict egalitarianism) after guaranteeing a minimal egalitarian base. Information about distribution of payoffs under different criteria reduces dramatically such choice since most players opt or revise their decision in favor of the criterion which maximizes their own payoff (and, by doing so, end up being farther from the maximin choice). Large part (but not all) of the stakeholders’ choices before knowing the payoff distribution are driven by their performance beliefs since two thirds of them choose the criterion in which they assume to perform and earn relatively better.