Social Capital and its Reinforcing Variables A Case Study on Agricultural, Service and Industrial Cooperatives in Shiraz and its Suburbs

Based on the traditional management perspectives, economic, tangible and human capitals played crucial part in organizations however; today social capital is of prime concern. With regard to this, the current research was conducted in 1398-90 to study variables reinforcing social capital in organizations. Across the cooperative societies of Shiraz city, using Kerjsey-Morgan table, 322 members were selected out of 11092- the statistical population. Questionnaire was the data collection tool which was put to expert view for validity test. Also, for a pilot study, 30 copies of the questionnaire were handed out to and completed by employees of cooperatives to calculate Cronbach's Alpha for reliability. Results obtained show that social capital is high in cooperatives. Also, demographic factors (which were considered as reinforcing factors to social capital), organizational culture, organizational sphere, employee's empowerment, motivation, involvement in decision-making, sense of belonging to workplace, and job security were established to be factors reinforcing social capital. Also, with stepwise regression it was revealed that participation factors in decision-making, sense of belonging to workplace and organizational culture respectively had more share than other factors in social capital.