Emotional capital

= Emotional Capital from a marketing perspective =First coined by Coca-Cola president Steven J. Heyer to refer to the ways that consumers' emotional investment in media content and brands increases the brand's worth (1), other definitions have now branched off. In the business world emotional capital is commonly broken into two different areas: Internal Emotional Capital and External Emotional Capital.

External Emotional Capital

External Emotional Capital is Heyer's original idea.

External emotional capital is the value of the feelings and perceptions held by the customer and the external stakeholder towards your business.

These emotions are in the limelight right now as companies find that businesses rely on loyalty over quantity. A perfect example of emotional capital saving a company can be seen with Apple Inc. over the past ten years.

Internal Emotional Capital

Internal emotional capital is the value of the emotional commitments held in the hearts of the people within your business. It can be described as the feelings, beliefs and values held by everyone working in the business.

Strongly connected to External Emotional Capital, the internal values of a company may strengthen or weaken a company's support system.

= Emotional Capital concept from scientific perspectives =In the scientific litterature, the concept "Emotional capital" was coined by different academic fields.

From Sociology (Bourdieu's theory)

The sociologist Helga Nowotny (1981), drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, saw emotional capital as a variant of social capital, but characteristic of the private, rather than the public sphere (Nowotny 1981).

From Economics of Education and Human Resources

Quoted in her work in 2002, the economist of Human Resources, Prof. Dr. Benedicte Gendron defined the concept " © Emotional capital" in 2004 using a pluridisciplinary approach of human resources, combining Human capital theory and the emotional competencies from emotional intelligence models. She defined the ""© Emotional capital as the set of emotional competencies which constitute a resource inherent to the person, useful for the personal, professional and organizational development and takes part in social cohesion, to personal, social and economic success" (Gendron, 2004, 2006).
In her emotional capital model (which won in 2006 a National Prize of The Academie Francaise - Louis Cros Award, French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences-) , she stressed out that emotional capital (EC) is essential to enable human capital formation, accumulation and, its optimal use for individuals and crucial in human resources management in the today’s increasingly complex and competitive global workplace for companies and organizations.
Gathering research on neurosciences and child development, psychology and sociology, she underlines the impacts of the EC on the constitution and exploitation of human capital and social capital.
For her,""Emotional capital is more than an additional capital.It is a booster capital energizing the social capital and human capital" (as narrowly defined and measured in traditional human capital models i.e for the author, the emotional capital is part of the human capital defined and measured in a broader way than that of the traditional models).
"Furthermore, because of its impact on performance (at school as at work and for the organizations), on well-being (life satisfaction, health...)and on social cohesion and citizenship, emotional capital should be taken into account seriously by public and educational policy-makers and praticians and companies."
"To end, emotional capital is the set (resource) of emotional competencies which gives individuals and organizations the ability to use emotions to help individuals at solving problems and living a more effective life and the organization at facing economics and social changes and being successful and surviving in the new economics world. Emotional capital without capital (physical, human, social and cultural), or capital without emotional capital, is only part of a solution. With it, it is the head working with the heart and the hands. All of the three H need to be combined. For a full and ethic use of Human Resource with a big H, that implies to taking into account the three H of each individual: Hands, Head and Heart." (Gendron, 2004, p.31).

= References =
# Gendron Bénédicte. (2004) [http://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/wpsorb/r04113.html Why Emotional Capital Matters in Education and in Labour? Toward an Optimal Exploitation of Human Capital and Knowledge Management, in Les Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques, série rouge, n° 113, Paris : Université Panthéon-Sorbonne,37 p. ]
# Gendron Bénédicte. (2006) [http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/halpapers/halshs-00129665_5Fv1.htm Le capital émotionnel et genre : ce capital qui fait aussi la différence entre les filles et les garçons à l’école et au travail, Les Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques, série rouge, n° 76, Paris : Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne & CEREQ, 26 p.]
# Gendron Bénédicte (dir. 2007) [http://publications.univ-montp3.fr/cahiers-du-cerfee-23 Émotions, compétences émotionnelles et capital émotionnel, Les Cahiers du Cerfee, n°23, Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, ISBN 978-2-84269-796-9, ]
# Nowotny, H. (1981) “Women in Public Life in Austria” in Access to Power: Cross-National Studies of Women and Elites eds Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and Rose Laub Coser London: George Allen & Unwin.

1. Convergence Culture, Jenkins

2. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21269275-20622,00.html