Organizational Behavior

In this paper, I discuss the role social capital plays in the development of collective community achievements. As a case study, I use the Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (Viet-AID) in Boston, the country’s first community organization founded and operated by Vietnamese refugees and immigrants to build its own community center. I explore the relationships and social networks within a community and find that various forms of social capital must be created and sustained to fulfill the long-term financial and political requirements of building a community center. Viet-AID relied upon four primary strategies for building relationships that lie at the crux of this organizing project: 1) developing a committed base of organizers and leaders within the Vietnamese American community—a form of bonding social capital, 2) building connections across to local established institutions and actors, 3) building support across the various constituencies and diverse social terrain within the Vietnamese American community—a novel interpretation of bridging social capital, and 4) creating a bicultural organizing strategy that was mindful of the long-term need to build capacity within the community. These four strategies allowed this immigrant/refugee community to use social capital to strengthen solidarity and cohesion while confronting the unmet needs of an ethnic community.

The importance of an investor's organizational