Reputation, the Social Capital of a Digital Society

Abstract

This chapter discusses how reputation comes to take a prominent position in the job market of the knowledge economy and why it should be considered the form taken by social capital in the digital age. Reputation establishes as the ‘equivalent’ shared by both offline and online domains as an asset that digital knowledge workers must acquire and strategically manage in their network of professional contacts, decisive to get jobs and establish professionally. Reputation links into value as an investment in social relations with the expectation of an economic return, being the source for trust to be established among participant in hybrid contexts of interaction made of digital and non-digital exchanges that do not necessarily imply face-to-face or physical proximity.