Developing A Scale to Measure Social Capital Generated and Business Benefits on Social Networking Sites

Social capital is a manifestation of investment in social relations and benefits therein. It affects individual and organizational performance by facilitating coordination, creativity, leadership, learning, teamwork and trust. Social Networking Sites (SNS) find wide adoption across the globe transforming the way people interact and form social capital. It provides options for information disclosure helping locate people with common interest and maintain ties with a larger network, compared to offline networks broadening scope of bridging social capital. Internet based social networks have transformed the way in which, people socialize and share information ensuing profound implications for businesses. Extant literature on SNS research does not provide a scale to measure social capital generated from SNS use and strategic and operational benefits emanating from it. This paper presents a scale; drawing upon existing scales, to measure social capital generated on SNS, and perceived organizational benefits of SNS use. The scale has been empirically validated on a sample of working professionals in India. The scale reliability and validity was found to be satisfactory, rendering it useful instrument for academic research. Practitioners too can use the scale to measure effectiveness of their SNS implementation strategy