Social capital of clusters in the function of raising competitiveness of small and medium sized enterprises

Social capital represents collective or individual value gained from connectedness in certain groups or networks. Custer is a system of connected enterprises and institutions that provide synergetic effect with their actions. Accordingly, one of very popular ways of organizing and strengthening the role of small and medium-sized enterprises is their connecting into clusters and building competitive advantage on that basis. Nowadays numerous organisations are trying to change their relationship towards social capital and divert a significant portion of their activities towards its quality management. The aim of this paper is to perceive social processes in the Serbian clusters and point out how the access to a cluster means entering a specific network of relations that can contain rich social capital. In that sense, the significance of the recognition of social capital in the clusters by small and medium-sized enterprises will be highlighted, since the relations of formal and informal connections in the networks have a strategic value for the improvement of SMEs, that are otherwise unable to make faster economic progress due to limited resources.