On your first question, about metrics for social-capital. Short answer is that no. I haven’t done any direct metrics on that. The main work I’ve don in that regard is a diagnostic/metric called SEMPER – see sempermetrics.com. It’s more about measuring ‘ability to do work’ in a given context, and then working out what to do to improve it – which in effect is a kind of metric of social-capital, but possibly not in the sense that you mean.

It’s also not ‘mathematical’, in that it’s based in narrative-enquiry rather than external analysis. It is possible to put the results of multiple SEMPER diagnostics through the usual statistical mill if required, though I’m not convinced that’s always a useful thing to do – the deviations and ‘outliers’ are often a lot more important than the norms or averages, for example.

On your second question, about high-school as enterprise: again, no, I haven’t done direct work in that context (though I can put you in touch with others in Britain who have, if that’ll help). But it doesn’t take much to transfer the same reasoning over to there. For example:

- An ‘enterprise’ is in essence a ‘community of commitment’ (see ‘What is an enterprise?‘ on Slideshare); an ‘organisation’ is a social-construct bounded by rules and responsibilities; a high-school is merely one example of where these intersect. An organisation in effect is a common reference-point for an intersecting set of enterprises: what are the ‘commitments’ that describe those enterprises? What potential shared-commitment – i.e. ‘the enterprise’ for ‘the organisation’ – that can be used (as one of my clients put it) as “a totem-pole for all the tribes”?

- One of the most visible drivers in high-school, and especially for drop-outs, is what they term ‘respect’. If we look at the market model – the intersection of purpose, relationships, conversations and transactions – one of the ways in which that is expressed is in respect: ‘respect’ precedes attention precedes transaction in the market-sequence. The catch is that respect is actually social, whereas many in school (again, especially drop-outs) will think of it as a personal possession – because that is how they experience it. Given the confusions of this culture, they will often regard ‘respect’ as a ‘right’, and/or as something that can be ‘bought’ via transactions; we also see strong evidence of the delusion that ‘power is the ability to avoid work’, especially relational-work, in that ‘respect’ apparently negates any need to relate with others as peers, but instead enables non-negotiable static hierarchies of ’superiority’ versus ‘inferiority’.

I don’t know if this is making sense? – it probably needs a better explanation than I’m giving it here… But hope this will help as a start, anyway. And yes, would be glad to talk with you more about this!

I haven’t seen this stated quite this clearly before. It brings to mind two questions.

First on the issue of “metrics” for social capital. Following the framework you lay out in the post, it seems to me that associations and relationships lend themselves to behavior that can be observed. Once behavioral data is indentified mathematical models can be brought into play. I wonder if you’ve done work in that direction.

Second, have you or others who share this point of view ever focused on the high school as an enterprise? My thought is that if problem in high school dropout factories were framed as a deficit of social capital, it should be possible to craft minimally invasive interventions that makes