The social capital of an organization or an individual can be conceptualized as embedded resources in a social network that provides an appropriate environment for the organization or individual. Various ways of measuring such resources by capacity indices are discussed. In particular, it is noted that some of the definitions of network capacity have similarities with common indices of network centrality. The measurement problem is conveniently approached by introducing a probabilistic network model that allows capacity to be predicted from estimates of the availability of resource links in the network. The model is also used to derive and compare theoretical capacity expressions for some simple network structures.

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Last update: 2000-02-15/CE