Physician social capital: its sources, configuration, and usefulness.

Specific characteristics of health care shape the social capital of physicians and, consequently, their behavior and the performance of organizations. In this article, propositions about how social capital is influenced by four characteristics of health care are developed. These propositions are analyzed with reference to the mechanisms through which social capital operates, to the contingencies that make it valuable, to the integrative power of a social capital framework in health care management, and to their practice implications.