Social Capital (Bonding vs Bridging)

Putnam's distinction between two forms of social capital: bonding capital (strong ties within homogeneous groups that provide support, trust, and solidarity) and bridging capital (weak ties across different groups that provide access to new information, opportunities, and perspectives). Communities and organizations need both: bonding capital creates the trust needed for cooperation; bridging capital creates the diversity needed for adaptation. An excess of bonding without bridging produces insularity; bridging without bonding produces fragmentation.

When to use it

When teams are cohesive but insular (need more bridging); when organizational connections are broad but shallow (need more bonding); when designing organizational structures, team composition, or collaboration mechanisms; when analyzing why some communities produce innovation and others produce groupthink.

How it can help

Audit your organization's social capital balance. High bonding, low bridging produces loyal but insular teams that resist outside ideas (classic silo problem). High bridging, low bonding produces networks with lots of connections but no trust depth to support collaboration on hard problems. The optimal design: strong bonding within teams (trust, mutual support) combined with systematic bridging between teams (cross-functional projects, rotation programs, shared rituals).