Firm social capital as competitive asset: The case of Lipari consulting

Abstract

Social network analysis is increasingly becoming a subject of interest in many diverse areas of study. With the development of online social networks and the high volume of available information online, it is relevant to use this information to better understand how firms are connected to each other and how that can become a competitive advantage. This dissertation aims at studying a specific firm, dividing the analysis into two different contexts. One involving the collaborators of the company and their contacts. Another looking into the direct connections of the company. For data collection, it was used LinkedIn for the first case and information given by the firm for the second part. For the individual network, the data collection resulted in more than 13000, which resulted in around 400 companies after being filtered according to criteria such as position of the person in the company, size, age and sector of the company. The analysis was done using descriptive statistics and the software UCINET to create the representation of the networks and then to further analyze centrality measurements. The results indicate that this company’s collaborators have very similar profiles; that most of the connections are within 4 areas of business; that most of the contacts exist within Italy; that most of the companies are in the market between 20 to 50 years. The conclusions taken show what kind of social capital management strategy the company has and what kind of steps it could take to further develop their business.