Social capital does not have a clear and indisputable meaning, for substantive and ideological reasons. There is no established and commonly agreed definition of social capital and the particular definition adopted by a study will depend on the discipline and level of research. It is not surprising that, considering the different frameworks for observing social capital, there are considerable disagreements and even contradictions in the definitions of social capital.
Due to difficulties in defining social capital, authors tend to discuss the concept, its intellectual origin, its diversity of applications, and some of its unresolved questions before adopting a school of thought and adding their own definition (Adam and Roncevic, 2003). It has been suggested that an interdisciplinary definition would be less important if scholars had to redefine and appreciate definitions from other disciplines. SCIG (2000) further identified that all studies should discuss social capital in relation to the discipline, the level of study and the particular context, and that a set definition is not required for such, but rather an identification of the operationalization or conceptualization.
Other authors have identified that definitions vary depending on whether they focus on the substance, the sources, or the effects of social capital (Adler and Kwon 2002, Field et al., 2002).
Social capital has to do with the value of social networks, linking similar people and uniting between diverse people, with rules of reciprocity (Dekker and Uslaner, 2001). Sander (2002, p.221) stated that "the popular wisdom that more people get their jobs from those they know, rather than what they know, turns out to be true." Adler and Kwon (2002) identified that the basic insight guiding social capital research is that the goodwill others have toward us is a valuable resource. As such they define social capital as “the good will available to individuals or groups. Your sourceit lies in the structure and content of the actor's social relations. Its effects arise from the information, influence and solidarity that it makes available to the actor “(Adler and Kwon 2002, p.23). Dekker and Uslaner (2001) postulated that social capital is fundamentally about how people interact with each other.
