Date of Award

4-13-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Michael J. Hicks, PhD

Abstract

In the United States, and around the world, social capital is becoming an intriguing new focus for slowing the declining sense of community and community trust. This strengthening focus on social capital in empirical study has great potential for an important role in U.S. public policy, as policy changes focused on increasing social capital may decrease turnover.
Yet, according to researchers, not enough sufficiently tested empirical measures of social capital exist. Combining several existing measures should provide a theoretically informed measurement of social capital for turnover research with application to the U.S. Military. Within this context, this thesis incorporated survey responses into a predictive model of intent to turnover, incorporating a social capital variable, based on the several of its historical measurement studies.
This thesis used the social capital variable to add to the body of knowledge and help begin to fill the gap in the research about measuring this little-studied construct with regards to integrating it into a classic turnover model. The broader social sciences discipline has yet to expand upon the study of the social capital variable, in an empirically-sound and theoretically informed manner leading to a clearly-defined, universally-accepted definition of the social capital variable, including all its components. If universally accepted as a necessary component of employee turnover models, this social capital variable will require the beta coefficients for the classic antecedents to be reevaluated. This thesis takes the first steps toward this goal, by adding about one percent to the variance explained, above variance explained by classic turnover antecedents.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GIR-ENV-07-M11

DTIC Accession Number

ADA469287

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