The Benefits of Surrounding Tongji University for Creative Industry Social Capital and Enterprise Community (A case study of social capital and enterprise community)

This paper attempts to answer the questions that what functions does social capital play in the interaction between university and its surrounding industry, where does the social capital come from and how can we increase the stock of social capital for building a sustainable knowledge community. The enterprise community surrounding Tongji University is a spontaneous creative industry zone, containing a number of companies providing services on architectural design civil engineering, urban design and graphic design. University provides key elements such as social networks, generalized trust, open educational resources and liberal academic atmosphere which contribute to enhancing place-based knowledge community, forming an elastic labor market and facilitating the generation of social capital. Then university as the core of social capital creates relatively high-level and low-cost human capital and more efficient coordination mechanisms based on informal social rules and norms. Because the economic function of the coordination mechanisms is to reduce production costs and transaction costs, the enterprise community gains competitive advantages comparing with companies which must employ a fixed employees and rely on formal social norms like contracts. In return, the development of enterprise community increases social capital stock.