Social Capital and Economic Performance: some lessons from Farm Partnerships in Sweden

The social capital literature usually perceives social capital as dues ex machine for economic performance. In this paper we use existing social capital theory to develop a conceptual framework to explain; (i) the importance of organizational capital as the ‘missing link’ between social capital and economic performance, and (ii) the phenomenon of ‘complementarity’ of different forms of capital (i.e. Physical, Financial, Human, Social, Organizational and Economic Capital) as a prerequisite for economic performance. The conceptual framework is applied to Swedish farm partnerships involving machinery- and labour sharing. Our study suggest that (i) social capital combined with other forms of capital, such as financial, human, physical and organizational leads to greater economic outcomes and (ii) the creation of organizational capital can explain higher economic performance.