Social Capital at Work
Subtitle
Building the Hidden Asset that Drives Trust, Engagement, and Performance
Work has never been more connected—or more lonely. Endless pings and virtual meetings create the illusion of collaboration, but these exchanges are fast, incessant, and hollow. With only shallow interaction among colleagues, today’s teams are less engaged, less aligned, and less able to deliver their best.
What we’re missing is social capital: the deep bonds that make it easier to work together, share information, and turn ideas into action.
In Social Capital at Work, organizational social scientists John Burrows and Seth Rachlin explore how top companies set themselves apart by investing in this overlooked asset. When leaders intentionally build social capital, trust grows and results improve; when they don’t, silos harden, progress stalls, and even the strongest strategies fall apart.
Drawing on decades of research and real-world experience, Burrows and Rachlin offer a practical playbook to help you develop the workplace infrastructure that boosts social capital. They explain how to strengthen the networks that drive results, prioritize depth over volume, communicate with purpose, design environments that spark interaction, foster belonging, bridge divides, measure impact, and stay human in an AI-powered world.
Filled with field-tested strategies based on scientific research, Social Capital at Work reveals that relationships are the foundation everything else rests on—and why deliberately cultivating them is the most important thing a leader can do.
Bio
Seth Rachlin is a thought leader, educator, and researcher focused on making work and life more human through the power of social capital. He brings more than thirty years of experience as an entrepreneur, enterprise technologist, and consulting leader in financial services, including two successfully exited fintech startups and nearly a decade as a senior executive at global systems integrator Capgemini.
He is a full-time faculty member in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. He serves on advisory boards for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Seth is the co-author of the forthcoming Simon & Schuster book Social Capital at Work: Building the Hidden Asset that Drives Trust, Engagement, and Performance, available for presale now and releasing November 10, 2026.
Praise for this book
Burrows, a leadership lecturer at the University of Chicago, and Rachlin, a social data science professor at Arizona State University and former senior executive at Capgemini, debut with a well-researched treatise on the importance of social infrastructure in the workplace...Burrows and Rachlin resist the genre’s tendency toward triumphalism, acknowledging that social capital won’t soften competitive markets or impossible deadlines but can drive the authentic interaction that produces genuine efficiencies. It’s a convincing call to cultivate connection.
Publisher's Weekly
