Showing papers on "Embeddedness published in 2003"

Structural cohesion and embeddedness: A hierarchical concept of social groups

Abstract: Although questions about social cohesion lie at the core of our discipline, definitions are often vague and difficult to operationalize. Here, research on social cohesion and social embeddedness is linked by developing a concept of structural cohesion based on network node connectivity. Structural cohesion is defined as the minimum number of actors who, if removed from a group, would disconnect the group. A structural dimension of embeddedness can then be defined through the hierarchical nesting of these cohesive structures. The empirical applicability of nestedness is demonstrated in two dramatically different substantive settings, and additional theoretical implications with reference to a wide array of substantive fields are discussed.

Relational Embeddedness and Learning: The Case of Bank Loan Managers and Their Clients.: The Case of Bank Loan Managers and Their Clients.

Abstract: As a complement to the literature on learning in firms, we investigate learning in markets, a nascent area of study that focuses on how learning occurs between, rather than within, firms. The core idea behind our framework is that networks shape knowledge transfer and learning processes by creating channels for knowledge trade and reducing the risk of learning. In developing our framework, we elaborate on the knowledge transfer capabilities of different types of social ties, the informational properties of public and private knowledge, and how types of knowledge transfer and forms of learning follow from the networks within which firms embed their exchanges. We conducted fieldwork at Chicago-area banks to examine our framework's plausibility and application to learning in financial lending markets, a setting relevant to most firms. Findings indicate that learning is located not only in actors' cognitions or past experiences, but also in relations among actors, and that viewing learning as a social process helps solve problems regarding knowledge transfer and learning in markets.

Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action

Abstract: Introduction 1. Social movements, contentious actions, and social networks: 'from metaphor to substance'? PART I. INDIVIDUAL NETWORKS 2. Social Networks Matter. But How? 3. Movement development and organizational networks: The role of 'single members' in the German Nazi party, 1925-1930 PART II. INTERORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS 4. Networks in opposition: Linking organizations through activists in the Polish People's Republic 5. 'Leaders' or brokers? Positions and influence in social movement networks 6. Community embeddedness and collaborative governance in the San Francisco Bay Area environmental movement PART III. NETWORKING THE POLITICAL PROCESS 7. Contentious connections in Great Britain, 1828-1834 8. Networks, diffusion, and cycles of collective action 9. Movement in context: Thick networks and Japanese environmental protest PART IV. THEORIES OF NETWORKS, MOVEMENTS, AND COLLECTIVE ACTION 10. Why do networks matter? Rationalist and structuralist interpretations 11. Cross-talk in movements: Reconceiving the culture-network link 12. Beyond structural analysis: toward a more dynamic understanding of social movements 13. Networks and social movements: A research programme

Artifacts and Cultures-of-use in Intercultural Communication

Abstract: This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding how intercultural communication, mediated by cultural artifacts (i.e., Internet communication tools), creates compelling, problematic, and surprising conditions for additional language learning. Three case studies of computer-mediated intercultural engagement draw together correlations between discursive orientation, communicative modality, communicative activity, and emergent interpersonal dynamics. These factors contribute to varying qualities and quantities of participation in the intercultural partnerships. Case one, "Clashing Frames of Expectation Differing Cultures-of-Use," suggests that the cultures-of-use of Internet communication tools, their perceived existence and on-going construction as distinctive cultural artifacts, differs interculturally just as communicative genre, pragmatics, and institutional context would be expected to differ interculturally. Case two, "Intercultural Communication as Hyperpersonal Engagement," illustrates pragmatic and linguistic development as an outcome of intercultural relationship building. The final case study, "The Wrong Tool for the Right Job?," describes a recent generational shift in communication tool preference wherein an ostensibly ubiquitous tool, e-mail, is shown to be unsuitable for mediating age peer relationships. Taken together, these case studies demonstrate that Internet communication tools are not neutral media. Rather, individual and collective experience is shown to influence the ways students engage in Internet-mediated communication with consequential outcomes for both the processes and products of language development. For some social classes and in highly privileged geographical regions, we have entered into a period of rapid and efficient global communication practices mediating an array of interpersonal, discursivematerial, and cultural activities. Despite the robust connections between the increasing digitization of everyday communicative practice and issues such as globalization and homogenization, Internet-mediated intercultural educational activities remain demonstrably polymorphous. Reasons for this are many. Educational cultures and objectives vary across nation state boundaries (Belz, 2002) as well as across educational institutions within the US. Moreover, within the same university but across courses or time periods, student populations shift, pedagogical goals are reassessed, and micro-interactional phenomena illustrate their own "accentuality" (Volosinov, 1973), even when the task, as it were, is supposed to remain consistent across participants and time (Coughlan & Duff, 1994). The focus of this article is yet another dimension of human heterogeneity -- the cultural embeddedness of Internet communication tools and the consequences of this embedding for communicative activity. Three case studies will be presented which illustrate some of the possibilities and problems associated with foreign language intercultural interaction mediated by Internet communication tools. I argue that Internet communication tools, like all human artifacts, are cultural tools (for an extension of this argument to the natural environment and the social construction of nature, see Braun & Castree, 1998; Harvey, 1996; Williams, 1980). Specifically, I show that e-mail, instant messenger, and forms of synchronous chat, are deeply affected by the cultures-of-use, or to borrow a biological term -- phenotypic characteristics, evolving from the manner in which these tools mediate everyday communicative practice. To unpack this somewhat, most of the American students in the case studies have extensive Internet experience that catalyzes specific forms (and expectations) of communication. In turn, the resulting

Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Performance in Russia: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract: Drawing on the social embeddedness perspective, this article examines the impact of entrepreneurs' social capital on their firm performance in post-Soviet Russia. Based on face-to-face interviews with 75 Russian entrepreneurs in 1995 and follow-up interviews in 1999, the study examines effects of structural embeddedness, relational embeddedness and resource embeddedness on firm performance. The main finding is that relational embeddedness and resource embeddedness have direct positive impacts on firm performance, whereas structural embeddedness has no direct impacts on performance.

A Neo‐Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*

Abstract: A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo- Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy.

Knowledge management, HRM and the innovation process

Abstract: This paper aims to explore Castells’ proposition that the innovation process is being progressively intensified by developments in technological and organizational forms – that knowledge is being applied to the generation of knowledge. The paper focuses on the emergence and implementation of knowledge management (KM), and its particular application in Ebank. A global approach to KM focussing on intranet technology proved unsuccessful. In explaining this outcome, the paper focuses on the constraints posed by the social embeddedness of knowledge as having a crucial effect. In this case, such embeddedness seemed to be linked to the lack of extensive intra‐organizational networks and the disparate identities developed by the different business units of the firm. These findings highlight several implications for KM's role in the innovation process.

Bridging Uncertainty in Management Consulting: The Mechanisms of Trust and Networked Reputation

Abstract: This article analyzes the market of management consulting and identifies institutional and transactional uncertainty as its principal features. Based on these uncertainties, we argue that competition in this market takes place on entirely different grounds than in other business sectors. We suggest that the main drivers of competitiveness are neither price nor measurable quality, but rather experience-based trust and a mechanism we label ‘networked reputation.’ An embeddedness perspective is employed to develop the concept of networked reputation as an intermediate mechanism that complements the duality of system versus personal trust and accounts for firm growth. We reinterpret secondary data on the German consulting market, illustrate the significance of these mechanisms, and demonstrate how management consulting is situated in structures of social relations.

Migration and other Modes of Transnationalism: Towards Conceptual Cross‐Fertilization

Abstract: Sociological notions such as social network, social capital and embeddedness have proven valuable when adopted into a wide variety of social scientific fields. This has certainly been the case in the sociology of migration. Similarly, certain concepts drawn from studies on different modes of transnationalism - for instance, research and theory concerning the global activities of social movements and business networks - might serve as useful tools for understanding transnational social forms and practices among migrant groups.

The ‘relational turn’ in economic geography

Abstract: For almost two decades, economic geography has become increasingly populated with texts concerned with the ways in which social interactions between economic agents have shaped the geography of economic performance. This literature has ranged from identifying the cultural norms or conventions underpinning social relations (Storper, 1995, 1997; Asheim and Isaksen, 1997; Cooke and Morgan, 1998) to documenting the geographic extent of these relations (Scott, 1988; Dicken et al., 2001; MacKinnon et al., 2002) to analysing how different socio-economic processes can generate similar landscapes of restructuring (e.g. Massey, 1984, 1995; Glasmeier, 2000). Likewise, it has looked to disciplines outside of economic geography, most notably economic sociology with Granovetter’s (1985) notion of embeddedness and Coleman’s (1988) social capital but also the work of institutional economists (e.g. Hodgson, 1988; Lundvall, 1988), to integrate the ‘social’ into economic analysis. As a whole, this tendency represents a theoretical orientation where actors and the dynamic processes of change and development engendered by their relations are central units of analysis – an orientation we term here a ‘relational turn’ in economic geography. In this introductory article, we take stock of the key attributes that constitute this ‘turn’ by examining the context in which it has emerged, and the implications that such a turn has for three analytical tensions: the structure agency debate, the macroversus micro-unit of analysis and the geographic scale of the analysis. The four papers included in this special theme issue speak to those tensions, and by so doing, contribute to our understanding of the present limitations and potentials of a relational approach as well as suggest new directions for research. Some of the key contributions (though most certainly, not all) are reviewed here.

Patterns of Multidimensionality among Embedded Network Ties: A Typology of Relational Embeddedness in Emerging Entrepreneurial Firms

Abstract: Assuming heterogeneity among relationally-embedded ties, this study focuses on their classification. Network ties embedded within social relationships influence economic actions and represent a strategic form of organizing for emerging entrepreneurial firms. Research questions include the following: (I) What are the components of the social relationships of relationally-embedded ties? (2) How can relationally-embedded network ties be classified to identify different types of embeddedness based on variations in the social relationships? (3) What strategic implications can be drawn from a multidimensional view of relational embeddedness? This study uses case study methods to examine external network ties of eight emerging firms in the computer industry A classification typology of seven types of relational embeddedness emerges based upon combinations of three overarching social components-personal relationship, dyadic economic interaction, and social capital. The typology suggests multidimensionality of bot...

Economic Sociology and Embeddedness: How Shall We Conceptualize Economic Action?

Abstract: (2003). Economic Sociology and Embeddedness: How Shall We Conceptualize Economic Action? Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 769-787.

From manual workers to wage laborers : transformation of the social question

Abstract: In this monumental book, sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the history of what he calls "the social question," or the ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the Middle Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout, the author identifies two constants bearing directly on the question of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: the degree of embeddedness in any given community and the ability to work. Along this dual axis the author locates virtually the entire history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary Europe. This work is a systematic defense of the meaningfulness of the category of "the social," written in the tradition of Foucault, Durkheim, and Marx. Castel imaginatively builds on Durkheim's insight into the essentially social basis of work and welfare. Castel populates his sociological framework with vivid characterizations of the transient lives of the "disaffiliated": those colorful itinerants whose very existence proved such a threat to the social fabric of early-modern Europe. Not surprisingly, he discovers that the cruel and punitive measures often directed against these marginal figures are deeply implicated in the techniques and institutions of power and social control. The author also treats the flipside of the problem of social assistance: namely, matters of work and wage-labor. Castel brilliantly reveals how the seemingly objective line of demarcation between able-bodied beggars-those who are capable of work but who chose not to do so-and those who are truly disabled becomes stretched in modernity to make room for the category of the "working poor." It is the novel crisis posed by those masses of population who are unable to maintain themselves by their labor alone that most deeply challenges modern societies and forges recognizably modern policies of social assistance. The author's gloss on the social question also offers us valuable perspectives on contemporary debates over who should receive social assistance and whether this entitlement should be linked to the obligation to work. Castel's rich insights and brilliant generalizations are invaluable for anyone concerned with what he describes as the "new social question" of work and social welfare in contemporary society.

Knowledge Creation in Professional Service Firms: Institutional Effects:

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of institutional influences upon knowledge creation within professional service firms, whose main business is the provision of specialized consultancy. Such firms, we argue, provide an important setting for examining such influences because their survival depends on their ability to mobilize and synthesize professional bodies of knowledge. They, therefore, directly confront the constraints that institutionalized professions pose for processes of knowledge creation. By exploring the influence of the institutional context, the article extends earlier work on professional service and knowledge-intensive firms which has tended to adopt a more micro, organizational-level focus on knowledge creation and to neglect both the heterogeneous nature of knowledge and its embeddedness in institutional contexts.A comparative analysis of two firms located in different institutional contexts (science and the law) establishes some of the major mechanisms through which professional institut...

Practicing New Economic Geographies: A Methodological Examination

Abstract: Practicing new economic geographies necessarily entails a critical re-evaluation of research methodologies because of its different substantive research foci. In this article, I examine some methodological implications of the recent refiguring of the “economic” in economic geography. Some key features of new economic geographies include understanding the social embeddedness of economic action, mapping shifting identities of social actors, and exploring the role of material and discursive contexts in shaping economic behavior. I argue that practitioners of new economic geographies can no longer rely exclusively on established “scientific” methodology for empirical research and data analysis. Instead, I argue for a process-based methodological framework through which we employ complementary methodological practices (e.g., tracing actor networks and in situ research) and triangulation, not only to explore the microfoundations of economic action, but also to generate, in a reflexive manner, theoretic...

Contextual constraints in knowledge management theory: the cultural embeddedness of Nonaka's knowledge-creating company

Abstract: Nonaka and Takeuchi’s book The Knowledge Creating Company is one of the most influential in the field of knowledge management. The famous SECI Model, representing the four modes of knowledge creation (socialization, externalization, combination and internalization) seems to have been accepted by the knowledge management community as universally valid in conception and in application. This paper argues that the model must be seen first and foremost as a product of the environment from which it emerged, namely Japan. It is contended that each of the four modes can only be understood with reference to their embeddedness in Japanese social and organizational culture and related value systems. Thus the model should be used with caution. It should be seen as a map rather than a model; or perhaps as a special kind of mirror, which allows us to see ourselves and our knowledge management practices in new ways for directing change. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Embeddedness and Contractual Relationships in China's Transitional Economy

Abstract: Interfirm contracts represent common economic relations in the marketplace; they are also deeply embedded in social relations and social institutions. In the context of China's transitional economy, this study examines how three mechanisms-economizing transaction costs, network-based social relations, and institutional links-- affect interfirm contractual relationships in (1) the choice of search channels for contractual partners, (2) the formality and provisions in a contract, and (3) the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation. Empirical evidence is drawn from information collected on 877 contracts from 620 firms in two Chinese cities, Beijing and Guangzhou. The authors find distinct roles of social relations, institutional links, and regulatory environments in the initiation of contractual partners and the forms of contracts adopted, whereas transaction-specific factors play a significant role in the intensity of social interaction in contract implementation. These findings suggest the interplay among economic calculativeness, social networks and institutional links, and the complementarity in the underlying theoretical ideas.

Society Online: The Internet in Context

Abstract: From the Publisher: Within the developed world, much of society experiences political, economic, and cultural life through a set of communication technologies barely older than many citizens. Society Online: The Internet in Context examines how new media technologies have not simply diffused across society, but how they have rapidly and deeply become embedded in our organizations and institutions. Society Online is not exclusively devoted to a particular technology, or specifically the Internet, but to a range of technologies and technological possibilities labeled "new media." Rather than trying to cover every possible topic relating to new communication technologies, this unique text is organized by how these new technologies mediate the community, political, economic, personal, and global spheres of our social lives. Editors Philip N. Howard and Steve Jones explore the multiple research methods that are required to understand the embeddedness of new media. Society Online discusses the findings of the Pew Internet and American Life Project and is the first book to bring together leading social scientists to provide the most comprehensive and far-reaching Internet research data sets and to contextualize Internet use in modern life. The book features contributions by leading scholars from across the social sciences using a range of research techniques including systematic content analysis; comparative methods; quasi-experimental methods; probit; ordinary least squares and logistic regression analysis; small focus groups; historical, archival, and survey methods; ethnographic and auto-ethnographic work; and comparative analyses of policy traditions to probe, analyze, andunderstand the Internet in the context of everyday life. Society Online is designed for undergraduate and graduate students taking media studies courses in the areas of Communication, Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Information Sciences, and American Studies.

Embedding the multinationals ? institutions and the development of overseas manufacturing affiliates in Wales and North East England.

Abstract: PHELPS N. A., MACKINNON D., STONE I. and BRAIDFORD P. (2003) Embedding the multinationals? Institutions and the development of overseas manufacturing affiliates in Wales and North East England, Reg. Studies 37 , 27-40. The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) upon host regions is a topic of perennial interest within the fields of regional economics, industrial geography and regional development. Much of the early literature here draws negative conclusions regarding the wider indirect impacts of FDI on host regions, pointing to the branch plant syndrome. In light of significant processes of corporate restructuring and the build-up of host region institutional capacities, however, recent literature has claimed that the plants of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are becoming increasingly "embedded' in regional economies. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to provide a critical assessment of the regional "embeddedness' of FDI in Wales and the North East of England. Based upon an extensive survey of o...

Cognitive and Cultural Embeddedness: Combining Institutional Economics and Economic Sociology

Abstract: (2003) Cognitive and Cultural Embeddedness: Combining Institutional Economics and Economic Sociology Journal of Economic Issues: Vol 37, Papers From The 2003 AFEE Meeting, pp 461-470

Creating opportunities. Policies aimed at increasing openings for immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands

Abstract: Since the 1980s, subsequent Dutch governments have promoted self-employment of immigrants to reduce their unemployment rates. These policies have been focused on the (potential) actors themselves, i.e. the immigrants who have started or who may want to start a business. Taking mixed embeddedness as a point of departure, entrepreneurship and self-employment cannot be solely understood by focusing on the micro-level but has to include the larger macro and meso structures that impact on these actors' choices. In this paper, therefore, the focus is on the opportunity structure and on the policies that affect this set of options for starting a (small) business. A typology of policies that may alter this opportunity structure is offered.

Resource-Advantage Theory and Embeddedness: Explaining R-A Theory’s Explanatory Success

Abstract: In the mid-1990s, a new theory of competition, labeled “resource-advantage theory,” was proposed in the marketing literature. R-A theory’s explanatory and predictive successes have resulted in its being well received by both marketing and nonmarketing scholars. This article examines the characteristics of resource-advantage theory that have enabled the theory to successfully explain and predict marketing phenomena. Specifically, the thesis that R-A theory is a moderately socialized, embedded theory of competition is explored by focusing on the theory’s ability to provide a theoretical foundation for the frequently made claim that, at least in some circumstances, social structures and trust-based governance can be competition-enhancing.

Contacts and contracts: dyadic embeddedness and the contractual behavior of firms

Abstract: This chapter addresses social embeddedness effects on ex ante management of economic transactions. We focus on dyadic embeddedness, that is the history of prior transactions between business partners and the anticipation of future transactions. Ex ante management through, for example, contractual arrangements is costly but mitigates risks associated with the transaction, such as risks from strategic and opportunistic behavior. Dyadic embeddedness can reduce such risks and, hence, the need for ex ante management by, for instance, making reciprocity and conditional cooperation feasible. The chapter presents a novel theoretical model generating dyadic embeddedness effects, together with effects of transaction characteristics and management costs. We stress the interaction of the history of prior transactions and expectations of future business. Hypotheses are tested using new and primary data from an extensive survey of more than 900 purchases of information technology (IT) products (hard- and software) by almost 800 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Results support, in particular, the hypotheses on effects of dyadic embeddedness.

Physical Punishment and Maternal Beliefs in Sweden and Canada

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to examine the cultural embeddedness of the notions of hierarchy and solidarity in parent-child relationships at the macro and micro levels in two nations. Moth...