Investigation of social networks from social capital elements: Emprical study in İstanbul İkitelli organized industrial zone

While levels of economic development may vary between countries, it can also be different from one another in different regions of the same country and even different institutions of the same region. Especially, since the conditions of global rivalry became compelling in the 90s, the attemps to decrease regional differences and achieving regional growth became fruitless. These failures lead investigators to seek alternatives, and social notions were also included in the study. Social capital, which can be associated with nearly all studies on social sciences, did not only help the notion of capital to add a new dimension to itself, it also came to be seen as a new source of income. Social capital has an important role in processing the market efficiently and effectively through relations, connections and norms. It is important to let SME companies in Turkey's marketplace which have a remarkable number reach past different and effective notions and cost-reducing factors. Acquiring these notions and factors become possible through their own available or potential social capital. It constitutes the main theme of survey as corresponding to what extent social capital is effective and efficient in this context. In the first part of our study, conceptual and theoretical literature scanning of social capital was made and various network structures were handled within the framework of 'networks approach'. In the second part, the effect of social capital on entrepreneurs and regional development is examined. In the third section, the effect of social capital of 129 business partners in the SME segment operating in IOSB on business activities has been analyzed and a social network analysis has been made. With the SPSS program, the demographic information of the partners and the features of the enterprises and with the GEPHI program, social network features were tried to be determined. Besides our study shows that some hypotheses have been confirmed, it can be said that existing and potential social capital can be effective as a facilitating tool for the purpose in business activities.