Social Capital, Community Engagement, and Corporate Social Responsibility

Lately trust, faith, credibility and fair norm of reciprocity and collaboration has received attention in economic analysis, specifically in reference to the concepts of social capital, community engagement and corporate social responsibility. A business ecosystem is a reciprocally contingent arrangement interrelated by loose arrangements of a range of ecosystem components, including customers, dealers, challengers, and other stakeholders. So the subject that needs probing are: Can these three components form the Holy Grail to engender social inclusion and social networks based on trust and trustworthiness thereby enhancing the impact of CSR? What positive synergies can be activated if CSR were extended beyond the boundaries of patronage, philanthropy and paternalism? Are firms paying adequate attention to construct social capital? This chapter assesses the literature on the role of social capital, community engagement and CSR with emphasis on its ‘value’ for Corporates. It advances the descriptive and theoretical literature on social capital, CSR and social networks and attempts to shed light on characteristic and linkage by exploratory design of the virtuous synergistic circles that are established between Social Capital, Community Engagements and the implementation of CSR practices.