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Social capital in China: a systematic literature review

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Abstract

Viewed as a nonfinancial resource residing in social relations, the concept of social capital has universal appeal. Given China’s distinct culture and tradition, however, whether and how social capital in China works distinctively relative to the West in terms of its origins, functions and impacts remain to be determined. This study focuses on the application of the Western-sourced social capital theory in China. We analyze articles published between 1996 and 2018 to map out the major findings in literature regarding the differences in social capital between China and the West, and identify questions for future research.

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Notes

  1. For studies published in Chinese-language management journals, we do not use the key words “China,” “Chinese,” “Taiwan,” “Hong Kong,” and “Macao,” as almost all papers published in the three Chinese management journals are based on data for China; our literature review did not find studies situated in other countries or regions in these journals.

  2. We include studies situated in the greater China region, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, following previous studies (Harding 1993; Peng et al. 2001; Li and Tsui 2002; Lu et al. 2015). Whether Singapore should be regarded as part of the greater China region is still debatable, so we did not include it in our review. We thank a reviewer for this suggestion.

  3. See details of the papers in Tables 4, 5, and 6 in the Appendix.

  4. Among which, Chen et al. (2013) is a literature review of studies on Chinese guanxi.

  5. “Institutional ties” refers to organizational linkages with various institutions, such as government officials and agencies, banks and financial institutions, universities, and trade associations (Xu et al. 2012).

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Acknowledgements

This research was in part supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China research Grants (NSFC: 71672123, 71772096, 71533002, and 71732005), and Major Projects of the Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education (16JJD630002). Comments and suggestions from ABM Editor-in-Chief Dr. Fabian Jintae Froese and reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Tianjin, China

    Hongjuan Zhang

  2. School of Management Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, 25 Zhujiang Road, Tianjin, China

    Rong Han

  3. School of Management, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA, 94117, USA

    Liang Wang

  4. Business School, China Academy of Corporate Governance, Nankai University, 94 Weijin Road, Tianjin, China

    Runhui Lin

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  1. Hongjuan Zhang
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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4, 5 and 6.

Table 4 Studies on the antecedents of social capital in China
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Table 5 Studies on the implications of social capital in China
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Table 6 Studies on the mechanism and process of social capital in China
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Zhang, H., Han, R., Wang, L. et al. Social capital in China: a systematic literature review. Asian Bus Manage 20, 32–77 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41291-019-00081-3

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