Social Capital and Organisational Survival in Times of Crisis: A Russian Case Study

In this article, we focus on both the bright and dark sides of the organisational social capital of Russian manufacturing enterprises and its influence on their economic trajectories after the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. The analysis is based on a sociological survey of the CEOs and employees of 300 companies and statistics on their economic performance in the period 2001-2014. We found that only trust in the CEO helped companies to survive, while other characteristics did not. The relation between an enterprises' social capital and its economic performance after 2008 is counterintuitive: companies wherein the CEO enjoyed a high level of trust but where cooperation between managers and employees was generally low showed significant average annual sales growth.