Business motives for providing unilateral ( as opposed to reciprocated) personal and/
or professional community support can be understood from the perspectives of the
rational-choice view of social capital as a regional development resource ( Coleman
1993) , as well as from the social embeddedness of economic activity ( Granovetter 1985,
Putnam 1993) . A rational-choice view is that social capital is a resource generated
and used by individuals to serve their own interests ( Flora et al. 1997) . In the extreme
( ‘undersocialized’ view, Granovetter 1985) , businesses support their communities
because it pays o for them. Alternatively, businesses support their communities
and vice-versa, no matter what, because it is expected of them ( the ‘oversocialized’
view) . Granovetter ( 1985: 482) explains that in traditional societies, economic life was
submerged ( embedded) in social relations; and that if social capital is now merely a
rational choice, then the traditional situation has been reversed: social ‘relations
become an epiphenomenon of the market.’