Congregations in Good Company

Theme Program: “Congregations in Good Company”

By Don Cohen
Friday, February 18, 2005
9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Social commentators from Jane Jacobs to Robert Putnam have noted the decline in social capital in American society. According to Don Cohen, “social capital consists of the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible.”

Churches in America are among the most significant generators and beneficiaries of social capital — and large congregations can be at the growing edge of efforts to restore social capital. When properly harnessed, social capital generates “greater coherence of action due to organizational stability and shared understanding.”

Don Cohen is a leading authority on social capital. He is editor of Knowledge Direction and co-author of In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work. Cohen did much of the field research and actual writing of the case studies for Better Together, which profiles twelve success stories in generating social capital, including Saddleback Church and its Purpose-Driven Church Conference. Cohen’s articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, California Management Review and Knowledge and Process Management.

When not engaged in research and writing about social capital, Don Cohen is a playwright and fiction writer. He is married to the Reverend Helen Cohen, a Unitarian Universalist minister, and lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

An Executive Book Summary® of Don Cohen’s and Laurence Prusak’s book, In Good Company, can be downloaded from:

http://www.mbadepot.com/partners/ingoodcompany.pdf

Unitarian Universalist Association
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