Browsing by Subject "Social Capital"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Are they truly divine?: a grounded theory of the influences of Black Greek-lettered organizations on the persistence of African Americans at predominantly White institutions.
    (2012-02) Mitchell, Donald
    This study explored the influences of Black Greek-lettered organizations (BGLOs) on the persistence of African Americans at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). To investigate the relationships, emphasis was placed on social capital that may be gained through BGLO involvement. Nan Lin's (1999) network theory of social capital was used as the theoretical framework for the study. The theory highlights the idea that social capital is embedded in resources gained though social networks. Grounded theory - a qualitative research approach - was used in the study. Focus groups were conducted with four BGLOs, and a series of twenty-four one-on-one interviews were conducted with eight interview participants at a PWI in the Northeast. The study revealed that (1) relationships/connections, (2) increased social lives, (3) gaining community and administrative experiences, (4) academic monitoring, and (5) leadership development, which were all framed as "returns," influenced persistence in different ways. Additionally, women found gender to be important in establishing social networks in BGLOs, whereas men de-emphasized the role of gender in their experiences. The study closes with discussion of the findings and implications for research and practice.
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    Bridging Brown County Case Study: Connecting Communities and Finding a Future
    (University of Minnesota. Extension Service, 2006) Brandt, Erin
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    Determining influence in social networks using Social Capital
    (2014-05) Sharma, Dhruv
    The proliferation of online social networks enables the influence of a person or an event to propagate to every corner of the globe in a very short duration of time. The problem of identifying such key sources of influence is important for a wide variety of applications from sales and marketing to public health and policies. Most of the existing methods for identifying influencers use the process of information diffusion to discover the nodes (people) with the maximum expected information spread. In this work we have developed a novel method for identifying key influencers in a given network. This method works on the premise that people generate more value for their work by collaborating with peers having high influence. The social value generated through such collaborations denotes the notion of individual social capital. At the core of this method we use the popular valuation-allocation approach for finding the individual social capital value. In this approach first we determine the value of the entire network using a valuation function and then we do a fair allocation of this entire network's value amongst the participating nodes (people). We show that our Valuation and Allocation functions satisfy several axioms of fairness and fall under the Myerson's allocation rule class.Also, we implement our allocation rule using an efficient algorithm and show that our algorithm outperforms the baselines in several real life datasets. Especially, for the DBLP collaboration network our algorithm outperforms PageRank, PMIA and Weighted Degree baselines by up to 8% in terms of precision recall and F1-measure.Furthermore, we use Hypergraphs as a tool to model group collaborations more effectively and empirically show the superiority of hypergraph edge weights as compared to dyadic edge weights for identifying influencers.To conclude with we discuss a couple of popular distributed programming paradigms, namely MapReduce and BSP (Bulk Synchronous Parallel) and the implementation of the algorithm on these.
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    Immigrant social capital and firm strategic heterogeneity: effects on foreign entry and firm performance.
    (2011-06) Hernandez, Exequiel
    I explore the effects of firms' ties to co-national immigrants on foreign entry and performance. I argue that location choice and subsidiary survival are influenced by immigrant social capital--which arises from common country bonds and becomes activated when firms co-locate with immigrants of the same nationality in a host location. Moreover, firms respond to and benefit differentially from the resources available through immigrant social capital based on heterogeneity in capabilities, resource needs, and the types of buyers they target. I test these ideas on a sample of foreign investments made by 197 firms from 27 countries into the U.S. between 1998 and 2003. Using a unique set of instruments to account for selection bias, I find strong support for my propositions. This dissertation makes theoretical contributions by showing that immigrant social capital provides firms with unique location-based advantages, and that strategic heterogeneity explains which firms seek out and benefit from social capital. It also has practical implications for managers and policy makers.
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    Strategies utilized by African refugee and immigrant students in order to persist in post-secondary career and technical education programs
    (2013-05) Prokop, Pamela Ann
    This research study was a constructivist case study designed to elicit the strategies utilized by African refugees and immigrant students in order to persist in their post-secondary career and technical education programs. The eleven students interviewed were currently enrolled in or recently graduated from a technical college in a suburb of the Twin Cities. The interview questions focused on the strategies these students have employed in order to persist academically: Which programs and/or services were utilized? What support networks were found to be beneficial? What kept these students motivated to continue in their studies? The findings which emerged from the analysis of the interviews indicate that the students felt challenged by the academic nature of the English language utilized in the classroom and course material as well as the time required to comprehend the course material. The students had little hesitation when asking for assistance from their instructors or lab assistants; however they tended not to use most of the academic and social programs and services offered on campus or in the community. iv Each student mentioned having a busy life due to juggling multiple life-roles, but few knew how to effectively manage their time. Finally the students reported receiving encouragement from many sources which kept them motivated to persist. These findings had two main implications: critical thinking skills were not being developed and there may be a reliance on impractical strategies. Several recommendations include (a) encourage students to be more proactive in initiating conversation with their U.S.-born classmates, (b) utilize lab assistants to help with the development of critical thinking skills, (c) hire non-U.S.-born peer-tutors, (d) offer summer bridge courses to teach background scientific concepts and technical vocabulary, and (e) develop an information scavenger hunt to introduce on-campus resources. Recommendations for future research include expanding this study to include other demographics to gain a better understanding of the persistence strategies utilized in post-secondary career and technical education.