Capital social y desarrollo económico un estudio de las redes de innovación en España

Abstract

In 1916, Lyda Judson Hanifan used the term social capital for the first time to describe the importance of community commitment as a support for democracy and development (Hanifan, 1916). Since then, this concept has been widely -and increasingly- studied from the perspective of several academic disciplines, including economics. The definition of social capital has generated some controversy among academics; moreover, it has been confused, due to their similarities, with several concepts such as institutions, trust or culture, leading to some theoretical and methodological problems (Dasgupta, 2002; Durlauf and Fafchamps, 2004). However, recent studies tend to clarify those confusions, considering social capital as the set of resources embedded in social networks of relationships (Lin, 2005). This definition highlights not only the salient role it may play in development processes -the so-called set of resources-, but also its network perspective, suggesting that in order to study and measure social capital it is necessary to focus on the network of relationships among agents to understand their structure and the rules governing them. Therefore, to measure social capital, both from a theoretical and a methodological perspective, Social Network Analysis appears to be a very powerful instrument which allows the acquisition of quantitative and qualitative information pertaining to the structures of social relationships (where social capital is embedded, according to its definition). Consequently, recent investigations are using this methodology to develop empirical analysis of social capital and are obtaining relevant conclusions regarding its influences on the results of the economic agents (Burt, 2000; Sabatini, 2005; Schilling and Phelps, 2006; Crowe, 2007; Fleming et al, 2007; Cowan and Jonard, 2008). In this PhD thesis we study the role of social capital in Spanish development by analysing innovation networks. As we will explain in depth below, we will attempt to assess how social capital, represented as a collaboration network, affects the innovation outputs of companies in Spain. While other previous studies have measured and analysed social capital in Spain (Pérez, 2005), to date no one else has depicted its innovation networks, obtaining conclusions as to their evolution and the role they have played in innovation outputs of firms. This is the primary contribution of this thesis. To develop our study, we structure the thesis in the following four parts: Part I: Theoretical Aspects We begin by revising the origin and controversy surrounding the definition of social capital in order to present a clear concept and a set of its most important characteristics. We also analyse the conclusions of previous research on social capital and economic development, summarising and interpreting the relationship between them. Part II: Methodological Aspects Prior to measuring social capital in our empirical study, we offer, in this section, a complete review of the techniques employed by previous research. Further, we explain Social Network Analysis in greater depth, presenting its history, primary applications in science and detailing its most important indicators. Finally, among all those indicators, we select and explain some of them in greater depth in order to adequately represent a more productive social capital. Part III: Empirical Study This section studies aspects of the relationship between social capital and economic development by analysing the innovation networks in Spain -using patent data- and the influences which these networks have on the innovation outputs of companies. In order to present a framework for the study, it begins by describing the situation and evolution of the Spanish innovation system. Secondly, it details the origin and characteristics of the database made up of patent data, studying its advantages and disadvantages and the manner in which we used these data to construct our networks. Thirdly, it presents and describes the patent results and the implicit collaboration found in the patent production processes, and elaborates the collaboration networks, analysing their structure, territorial differences and evolution over time. Finally, it models the relationship between some of the network properties and the innovation outputs in Spain, interprets the results and presents the conclusions. Part IV: Conclusions We summarise our work explaining in detail its theoretical, methodological and empirical conclusions. We focus especially on the results obtained in the empirical study and complete these conclusions with some indications and implications for future research in this field. Our primary contribution may rest on the differences we found among network properties which are crucial when nodes are considered at a national level and the properties which are significant only when analysing the regional network. This may lead companies, public institutions and policy makers to consider which type of innovation strategies they should follow in order to improve their results with respect to their previous situation and the spatial dimension of their collaboration patterns.