Políticas de seguridad

Social Capital is among the most recent in a series of theories in inter-personal capital that have developed over the past 40 years. Again due to the amount of publications on social capital, in order to understand social capital as an organisational construct, a systematic literature search has been conducted similar to the ones on „safety and health climate‟. The keyword used in the search was „social capital‟, as different terms were used to describe what has now been joined under the umbrella term „„social capital‟‟, a wide range of search terms was used, for example, „„social cohesion‟‟ and „„collective efficacy‟‟. Search term „social support‟ was excluded due to a vast literature relevant to social capital at work. It is believed that social capital is differed from social support, as social capital has its characteristics of „collective‟, „cohesion‟ and „aggregation‟. The criteria for inclusion in analysis were that the article must contain (1) study social capital in workplace settings, and (2) published in English. Under these criteria, leaving a sample of 88 article and findings were used as a background for the conceptualisation of „social capital‟ for the current research project.

Social capital is a multidimensional concept in which it has been defined in various ways depending on the broad spectrum of different perspectives used to address it (Requena, 2003). The term was defined as the capital provided by social relations and links derived from belonging to social networks , the formation of generalized trust in others, and /or those features of social relationships that facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for mutual benefit (Putnam, 1993; Kawachi, 1999). It is characterized by social groups rather than individuals, and it is seen as an asset of the individuals and therefore born of shared experience which fosters mutual trust and reciprocity (Shortt, 2004).

The definitions of social capital further demonstrate the idea of exploring its role as an

antecedent of OSH climate, as mentioned previously. Meanwhile, one of the objectives of the current research is to investigate the implementation of the OSH policy in schools with an organisational perspective. All social capital theories shared the notion that they consider the social aspects of organisational life and insists that inter-personal associations provide

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dividends to the people that invest in them, they also claimed that collectives fostering these inter-personal associations also derive benefits from them (Watson et al., 2005). This is similar to the idea of implementing OSH policy in organisations that different levels of

stakeholders put collective effort to obtain a safety and healthy work environment for workers.

On the other hand, the nature of benefits derived from social capital varies among the theories as does the normative determination about what constitutes an adequate organisational return for an individual‟s contributions (Portes, 1998). However, many research recognised social capital as a useful concept in explaining and understanding the international and inter-organisational variation in productivity and the quality of working life (Liukkonen et al., 2004). There is general acceptance that social capital is an important determinant of health and well being (Yip et al., 2007). Research has also proved that that social capital is positively associated with employees‟ health and well being in work

organisations (Requena, 2003; Liukkonen et al., 2004; Kouvonen et al., 2006). Social capital, therefore, shares the same property with OSH climate; both constructs are potentially

associate with health and well being in workplace.

It is worth discussing that social capital is multifaceted and its relationship with health (and recently well being) is complex (Ziersch et al., 2005), however, the health effects of social capital has been extensively studied, in that Macinko & Starfield (2001) counted 10 empirical studies and 24 comments and theoretical texts on social capital and health. In general low social capital has been associated with a range of health outcomes such as higher mortality (Kawachi et al., 1997; Skrabski et al., 2003; Kawachi et al., 1997a; Veenstra, 2002), poor self rated health (Kawachi et al., 1999), and poorer mental health (De Silva et al., 2007; De Silva et al., 2006). In particular, meeting socially with workmates and attendance at religious services is associated with better self-rated health (Veenstra, 2000). In terms of different types of social capital, bonding social capital has been associated with better self rated health (Poortinga, 2006). Health effects have been shown from community bonding and bridging social capital (Kim et al., 2006). Whereas, linking social capital was associated with a higher risk of poor health (Sundquist & Yang, 2007). Even the relationship between social capital

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and well being is multi-faceted, it seems that previous studies have demonstrated the well- built association and support the relevance of social capital in the current research.

There are studies arguing that social capital consists of two components: structural and cognitive dimensions. The structural dimension encompasses behavioural manifestations of social capital, which refers to the extent and intensity of associational links or activity, and includes social interaction in networks giving access to resources. The cognitive dimension thus encompasses attitudinal manifestations; includes values, norms, perceptions of support, sharing, trust and reciprocity (Harpham et al., 2002; Subramanian et al., 2003) which can be seen as a resource held between individuals interacting within the social networks. However, others have argued the distinction between cognitive and structural dimension do not

necessarily represent structural and individual qualities respectively (Coleman, 1990; Kouvonen et al., 2006). As it can be argued that the individual might participate in

associations and norms of reciprocity and trust, for example, can be a characteristic of social structures. The networks, for example, attached to individuals might be resources for the achievement of certain outcomes, and the norms of reciprocity, trust and support, may be embedded in social structure and thus serve as resources for groups.

Recently, there are some studies focused on another three types of social capital, they are bonding, bridging and linking social capital (Szreter & Woolcock, 2004). Bonding social capital is defined as the relations between individuals of similar social identity and facilitates cooperation within a group. Bridging social capital refers to connections between people from different races, classes or ages. Meanwhile, linking social capital means the connections between individuals of different power or status in hierarchies (Kawachi et al., 2004). Different from structural and cognitive dimensions of social capital, these three types of social capital are constructs to specify how social capital inheres in relationships between individuals in similar social context and in different levels of society (Harpham et al., 2002), and basically they do not intersect with each other but refer to different ties that cut across different individuals and communities (Kouvonen et al., 2006). Further, with relevance to the current research, (Kouvonen et al., 2006) suggested that three types of social capital could be found

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in the workplace: Bonding social capital refer to workers with similar socio demographic characteristics; Bridging social capital refers to people from different races, classes or ages cut across barriers in workplaces with much diversity; and linking social capital can inhere in the vertical networks between employers and employees with different degrees of institutional power.

There is a strong emphasis on the “social” aspect in Chinese workplaces; support, trust and communication are considered to be critical for a good and effective working relationship. However, most of the social capital studies have been carried out in western countries. For example: in a study of middle aged adults in Germany and the United States, results showed that relationships between individual level reports of reciprocity, trust and participation and self-reported health, depression, and functional status (Pollack & von dem, 2004). European Social Survey of 22 European countries found that while social trust and civic participation are positively associated with self related health (Poortinga, 2006). In Russia, a study

demonstrated that social capital correlated positively with good self-reported physical and emotional health (Rose, 2000). In Hungary, membership in both political and non political organisations has been positively associated with self-reported health (Skrabski et al., 2004). In a Finnish study, carried out in one of the country's bilingual regions, higher mortality was observed among Finnish-speakers attributed to their lower level of social capital in

comparison with the Swedish-speakers (Hyyppa & Maki, 2001). From the literature reviewed, there is only one study of the Chinese on the relationships between social capital and health by (Yip et al., 2007). They found that cognitive social capital of Chinese population in rural China is positively associated with self report general health, psychological health and subjective well being. From our knowledge, social capital at work has not been studied in schools and with limited research in China on social capital, it will be significant to investigate social capital with Chinese in relation to OSH issues.

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