Usable Social Science

4. Groups, Teams, Networks, Trust, and Social Capita

121 in perusing the social-science literature, we often find that a research topic—for example, individual stress—is claimed to be both important in itself and more important in social life than ever before. Reasons for this are then given. it is also sometimes claimed that the phenomenon is being studied more than ever before. another variant is that, while the phenomenon is important, it is understudied in relation to its importance (is any topic ever proclaimed to be “overstudied”?). Such assertions are usually not well documented, and one suspects that they are rhetorical, if not self-serving for the authors who pen them. after all, to say that one’s topic is more important or important but neglected is to proclaim the importance of one’s taking it seriously. in these ways, the assertions may say more about the author than about the topic. Nevertheless, such assertions may reveal something real. it is notable, for instance, that every topic listed in the chapter title has received similar advertisements: • Groups: “Group frenzy . . . an age of groupism . . . in recent years, the emphasis on groups and teams has gone beyond any rational assessment of their practical usefulness” (locke, 2001: 501–02). • teams: “teams are everywhere in business and industry, in government, in schools, hospitals, professional associations—indeed almost anywhere people gather to get things done” (lafasto and larson, 2001: xi). “empowerment and teams have taken the world by storm” (Klein, 2000: xxi). “‘virtual teams’ is one of the many hot topics in business these days” (Pauleen, 2004: viii). • Networks: “Networks have become a buzzword among academics and policymakers alike. Scholarship on networks has multiplied as fast as . . . 4 Groups, teams, Networks, trust, and Social Capital 122 Arenas of Usability networks [themselves]” (Martinez-Diaz and Woods, 2009: 1). “interorganizational relations and networks are in vogue” (Knoben, 2008: 2). • trust: “for more than a decade now, the topic of trust has been at the center of scholarly research on organizations” (Kramer and Cook, 2004: 1). “Social scientists have become obsessed with trust . . . lamented the lack of it, given it credit for any number of positive social outcomes” (Cleary and Stokes, 2008: 308). • Social capital: “Social capital has become a buzzword among political and academic elites” (Halpern, 2005: 1). Though skeptical, we cannot ignore such statements altogether. Their agreement is striking enough that we should ask why they agree. Part of the reason for the uniformity of assessment is, we will discover, that all of the concepts are part of a family—interrelated, overlapping, and perhaps addressing a broader movement. in this chapter, we unscramble the claims, identify the essence of each topic, pinpoint trends, and comment from time to time on usability. We proceed by the following steps: (1) noting a historical trend to downplay group relations in the history of the social sciences; (2) identifying some repeated “discoveries” of the group in the twentieth century; (3) selectively summarizing some accumulated knowledge about groups in social psychology; and (4) analyzing late-twentieth-century surges of interest in and research on teams, networks, trust, social capital, and their applications. at the end of the chapter, we reflect on why these surges occurred in these areas and offer a brief commentary on our times. tHe fate of GEMEINSCHAFT iN SoCial tHeoRy a major theme in nineteenth-century social science was the triumph of the impersonal over the personal side of life. ferdinand toennies (1964 [1887]) asserted the victory of the principle of society (Gesellschaft) over the principle of community (Gemeinschaft); Weber (1968), the victory of the rational and legal over the traditional; Durkheim (1997 [1893]), the victory of organic solidarity (contractual) over mechanical solidarity (communal); Redfield (1941), the victory of the urban over the folk; the Chicago school of sociology, the victory of secondary over primary relations in urban life (Reiss, 1964); and, in early developmental studies, the victory of the developed over the underdeveloped (lerner, 1958). economists neglected the personal with their assumptions of the depersonalized market and the atomized, unattached, rational, and unsentimental economic actor. firms were internally undifferentiated actors that behaved like individuals. Political scientists were preoccupied with the larger principles and institutions of democracy. anthropologists did concentrate on the small Groups, Teams, Networks, Trust 123 societies dominated by principles of kin, clan, and tribe, but these were far away from the contemporary West and in any event were headed toward extinction in the evolutionary march of civilization. verdicts on...