Showing papers on "Embeddedness published in 2016"

Changing with the Times: An Integrated View of Identity, Legitimacy, and New Venture Life Cycles

Abstract: To acquire resources, new ventures need to be perceived as legitimate. For this to occur, a venture must meet the expectations of various audiences with differing norms, standards, and values as the venture evolves and grows. We investigate how the organizational identity of a technology venture must adapt to meet the expectations of critical resource providers at each stage of its organizational life cycle. In so doing, we provide a temporal perspective on the interactions among identity, organizational legitimacy, institutional environments, and entrepreneurial resource acquisition for technology ventures. The core assertion from this conceptual analysis is that entrepreneurial ventures confront multiple legitimacy thresholds as they evolve and grow. We identify and discuss three key insights related to entrepreneurs’ efforts to cross those thresholds at different organizational life cycle stages: institutional pluralism, venture-identity embeddedness, and legitimacy buffering.

The Dynamics of Technical and Business Knowledge Networks in Industrial Clusters: Embeddedness, Status, or Proximity?

Abstract: Although informal knowledge networks have often been regarded as a key ingredient behind the success of industrial clusters, the forces that shape their structure and dynamics remain largely unknown. Drawing on recent network dynamic models, we analyze the evolution of business and technical knowledge networks within a toy cluster in Spain. Empirical results suggest that the dynamics of the two networks differ to a large extent. We find that status drives the formation of business knowledge networks, proximity is more crucial for technical knowledge networks, while embeddedness plays an equally important role in the dynamics of both networks.

Taking historical embeddedness seriously : Three historical approaches to advance strategy process and practice research

Abstract: Despite the proliferation of strategy process and practice research, we lack understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes and practices. In this paper, we present three historical approaches with the potential to remedy this deficiency. First, realist history can contribute to a better understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes; in particular, comparative historical analysis can explicate the historical conditions, mechanisms, and causality in strategic processes. Second, interpretative history can add to our knowledge of the historical embeddedness of strategic practices, and microhistory can specifically help to understand the construction and enactment of these practices in historical contexts. Third, poststructuralist history can elucidate the historical embeddedness of strategic discourses, and genealogy can in particular increase our understanding of the evolution and transformation of strategic discourses and their power effects. Thus, this paper demonstrates how in their specific ways historical approaches and methods can add to our understanding of different forms and variations of strategic processes and practices, the historical construction of organizational strategies, and historically constituted strategic agency.

Taking Historical Embeddedness Seriously: Three Historical Approaches to Advance Strategy Process and Practice Research

Abstract: Despite the proliferation of strategy process and practice research, we lack understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes and practices. In this paper, we present three historical approaches with the potential to remedy this deficiency. First, realist history can contribute to a better understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes; in particular, comparative historical analysis can explicate the historical conditions, mechanisms, and causality in strategic processes. Second, interpretative history can add to our knowledge of the historical embeddedness of strategic practices, and microhistory can specifically help to understand the construction and enactment of these practices in historical contexts. Third, poststructuralist history can elucidate the historical embeddedness of strategic discourses, and genealogy can in particular increase our understanding of the evolution and transformation of strategic discourses and their power effects. Thus, this paper demonstrates how in their specific ways historical approaches and methods can add to our understanding of different forms and variations of strategic processes and practices, the historical construction of organizational strategies, and historically constituted strategic agency.

Fitting In or Standing Out? The Tradeoffs of Structural and Cultural Embeddedness

Abstract: A recurring theme in sociological research is the tradeoff between fitting in and standing out. Prior work examining this tension tends to take either a structural or a cultural perspective. We fus...

Bureaucracy and Service Delivery

Abstract: This essay reviews the literature on the politics of bureaucracy in the developing world, with a focus on service delivery and bureaucratic performance. We survey classic topics and themes such as the developmental state, principal-agent relations, and the efficient grease hypothesis, and link them to new research findings in political science, sociology, and economics. We identify the concept of embeddedness as an important yet still underexplored framework that cuts across disciplines and which may be used to understand bureaucratic performance and service delivery. Looking forward, we outline a framework for conceptualizing bureaucratic action by exploiting variation across time, space, task, and client, and identify promising areas for further research on the bureaucrat-citizen encounter in developing countries.

What’s Policy Got to Do with It? How the Structure-Agency Debate Can Illuminate Policy Implementation

Abstract: How does policy influence human behavior? All theories of policy implementation have at their root assumptions about the nature of human action. Some (e.g., principal-agent theories) emphasize autonomous actors making a series of individual choices to maximize their interests. Studies of policy implementation in this vein (e.g., Lane 2013; Loeb and McEwan 2006; Sabatier and Mazmanian 1980) investigate how policy design—often the balance between sanctions and rewards—shapes individual choices and how that, in turn, relates to intended and unintended outcomes. Other theories (e.g., social networks) focus on the ways that individual action is shaped by social interaction and peer effects. Studies that take a network perspective on implementation (e.g., Coburn, Russell, et al. 2012; Frank et al. 2004) investigate how individuals’ embeddedness in systems of social relations influences what they learn about policy in the first place and how they respond. Other theories of implementation (e.g., sensemaking theory, institutional theory) focus on the way that individuals’ and groups’ interpretations of policy are shaped by cultural ideas available to them in the environment. This approach (e.g., Bridwell-Mitchell 2015; Burch 2007; Coburn 2004; Spillane et al. 2002) investigates how cultural ideas are embedded in social structure, influencing what individuals even think to do as they implement policies in the classroom,

Innovation-receiving subsidiaries and dual embeddedness: impact on business performance

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the degree of subsidiary’s external and internal embeddedness and the contribution on subsidiary’s business performance of a received innovation. In particular it focusses on dual embeddedness of the subsidiary that receives an innovation from the rest of the MNC’s network. Design/methodology/approach – Using Amadeus databases were selected 93 CEE subsidiaries located in six countries. Data were collected through a standardized questionnaire and three hypothesis were tested through an OLS regression model. Findings – The results indicate that the two types of embeddedness positively affect the received innovation’s contribution on business performance. Moreover, the inclusion of the interaction term shows how a simultaneously high level of embeddedness in both external and internal business networks lead to a multiplicative and positive effect on subsidiary’s business performance. This means that external and internal embeddedn...

Staying and performing: How human resource management practices increase job embeddedness and performance

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of human resource management (HRM) practices on employees’ organisational job embeddedness and job performance. Following the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) model of HRM, the authors predicted that ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing HRM practices would relate to fit, links and sacrifice components of job embeddedness, with these components mediating the relationship between HRM and employee job performance. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a matched sample of 197 Chinese state-own firm employees and their supervisors. Multiple mediation test was used to test direct and mediating effects. Findings – Results indicated that HRM practices contribute to the creation and development of embeddedness, and the improvement of job performance. The job embeddedness components of fit, links and sacrifice were found to mediate the HRM-job performance relationship. The results suggest that organisations can ...

Family embeddedness and business performance: evidences from women-owned firms

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the family context may affect female firms’ performance by contextualising the study within Italy and empirically analysing 307 Italian women-owned firms. Design/methodology/approach – By using ordinal regressions, this paper empirically investigates the influence of three dimensions of the family context on female firms’ performance, namely: the motivations to start a business; the support from the family once the business is established; and the mechanisms to achieve a suitable balance between work and family life. Findings – Overall, the results offer substantial support for the assumption that female business owners benefit from being pulled into the endeavour, from specific linkages with family and also from selected mechanisms to balance work and family life, thus contributing to show how strong the relationship between a firm’s performance and the family context is for women. Originality/value – Today female entrepreneurship represents an im...

Mobile transitions: Exploring synergies for urban sustainability research

Abstract: Urban sustainability approaches focusing on a wide range of topics such as infrastructure and mobility, green construction and neighbourhood planning, or urban nature and green amenities have attracted scholarly interest for over three decades. Recent debates on the role of cities in climate change mitigation have triggered new attempts to conceptually and methodologically grasp the cross-sectorial and cross-level interplay of enrolled actors. Within these debates, urban and economic geographers have increasingly adopted co-evolutionary approaches such as the social studies of technology (SSTor ‘transition studies’). Their plea for more spatial sensitivity of the transition approach has led to promising proposals to adapt geographic perspectives to case studies on urban sustainability. This paper advocates engagement with recent work in urban studies, specifically policy mobility, to explore conceptual and methodological synergies. It emphasises four strengths of an integrated approach: (1) a broadened understanding of innovations that emphasises not only processes of knowledge generation but also of knowledge transfer through (2) processes of learning, adaptation and mutation, (3) a relational understanding of the origin and dissemination of innovations focused on the complex nature of cities and (4) the importance of individual actors as agents of change and analytical scale that highlights social processes of innovation. The notion of urban assemblages further allows the operationalisation of both the relational embeddedness of local policies as well as their cross-sectoral actor constellations.

Unpacking the spaces and politics of energy poverty: path- dependencies, deprivation and fuel switching in post-communist Hungary

Abstract: This paper focuses on the embeddedness of energy poverty – understood as the inability to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home – in the socio-technical legacies inherited from past development trajectories, as well as broader economic and institutional landscapes. Using Hungary as an example, we explore the recent expansion of energy poverty across different demographic and income groups. While much of the mainstream literature focuses on cases where energy poverty affects distinct social groups and issues, our analyses examine the systemic implications of a form of deprivation that involves a much wider range of social and spatial strata. We develop a framework that highlights the different ways in which inadequate access to energy services has resulted in the emergence of new political reconfigurations among a variety of actors, while prompting the articulation of household strategies with far-reaching structural consequences.

Translating Institutional Logics: When the Media Logic Meets Professions:

Abstract: This article presents results from a case study of media activities in a Swedish governmental agency where we illustrate a) how the media logic is translated and become embedded in the studied agency, and b) how different professional groups inside the organization shape the translation process. Theoretically we do this by re-visiting the notion of translation. Translation theory focuses on the local enactment and embeddedness of institutional models, ideals and practices. Institutional logics literature, on the other hand, focuses on the creation and flow of field-level meaning systems. By combining these two theoretical perspectives we are able to form a framework for understanding the local embeddedness and enactment of field-level institutional logics. The result of our study suggests that institutional logics – once they become introduced in a given context – consist of four elements that are interpreted and enacted differently inside organizations. We identify three local, profession-based value sys...

The role of institutional dual embeddedness in the strategic local adaptation of international branch campuses:evidence from Malaysia and Singapore

Abstract: Past research revealed that International Branch Campuses (IBCs) are simultaneously under two types of isomorphic pressures. On the one hand, they are obliged to conform to the institutions of their host countries, which lead them towards homogenising with the local Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), hence deviate from their parent unit's model. On the other hand, they are required to maintain their parent unit's identity across borders. By adapting to the local context, IBCs gain legitimacy in their local milieus and thus reduce tensions with local stakeholders. By maintaining similarity with their parents, they differentiate from the local competitors and therefore better compete in the market place. This paper addresses the duality (between adherence to the parent's and local expectations) by studying six important Australian and British IBCs in two major higher education (HE) hubs in South East Asia. We identify the determinants of the IBCs' strategic choices and their responses to institutional pr...

Family embeddedness and entrepreneurship experience: a study of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs in Australia

Abstract: India has emerged as a major source of migrants for developed countries including Australia; yet, there is a dearth of research on Indian migrant entrepreneurs, particularly women. Using qualitative methods of enquiry, we explore the perceptions of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs (MWEs) and their partners in Melbourne, Australia, about their entrepreneurship experiences from a family embeddedness perspective. More specifically, we explore how family embeddedness of Indian MWEs is influenced by certain factors which in turn influence their entrepreneurship experience. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurship among Indian MWEs is a complex phenomenon influenced by their being an Indian, a woman and a new Australian, all of which interact and influence their family dynamics and entrepreneurial experience. Our findings shed light on the duality of Indian culture which exerts both an enabling and a constraining influence on the family dynamics of MWEs, the constraining role of gender and the posit...

Environmental Performance Focus in Private Family Firms: The Role of Social Embeddedness

Abstract: We investigate if private family firms have a greater environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms, and if this relationship is moderated by the strength of the firms’ social embeddedness. We empirically test these issues using a representative sample of 1452 private Australian small and medium-sized enterprises. Contrary to prevailing assumptions and previous indicative findings in the public firm context, our results show that family firms have a lower environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms. However, in cases where the firm is highly embedded in the social community, we find that family firms have a higher environmental performance focus. We explain our unexpected results by considering the role of financial risk in publicly held family firms. Accordingly, we posit that prior findings in the public firm context may be evidence of families expropriating wealth from nonfamily shareholders rather than altruistic pro-environmental behavior.

A concept of Eurasia

Abstract: To imagine Europe and Asia as constituting equivalent “continents” has long been recognized as the ethnocentric cornerstone of a Western, or Euro-American, world view. The amalgam Eurasia corrects this bias by highlighting the intensifying interconnectedness of the entire landmass in recent millennia. This article builds on the work of Jack Goody and others to analyze the unity-in-civilizational-diversity of the Old World. It draws on the substantivist economic anthropology of Karl Polanyi to postulate continuities between ancient ideals of economic embeddedness in the agrarian empires and various forms of socialism in the twentieth century. Today, when the human economy everywhere is again exposed to the domination of the market, the Eurasian dialectic has universal relevance. However, recognition and realization of pan-Eurasian affinities continues to be impeded by geopolitics, and sociocultural anthropology has a long way to go to overcome its Atlantic bias.

Reaching and Acquiring Valuable Resources: The Entrepreneur's Use of Brokerage, Cohesion, and Embeddedness:

Abstract: Entrepreneurs have two key aims in managing their ego-networks: extending reach to valuable resources and facilitating resource acquisition. This study provides a synthesis of the brokerage, cohesion, and embeddedness literatures to develop and present a multilevel theoretical framework and analytical model that treat both aims jointly. It makes three contributions. First, it highlights a trade-off that entrepreneurs face in allocating their available networking time and energy while pursuing these two aims. Second, it explores the central role of two types of embeddedness—relational and structural—in resolving this trade-off. Third, it helps entrepreneurs decide when to embed a particular dyadic connection relationally or structurally. We show that entrepreneurs can better balance their dual aim by structurally embedding some ties rather than trying to relationally embed all. The resultant network is one that meshes characteristics of brokerage and cohesive ego-network structures.

Super-diverse migrants—similar trajectories? Ghanaian entrepreneurship in the Netherlands seen from a Mixed Embeddedness perspective

Abstract: The Ghanaian population in the Netherlands is relatively well-endowed in terms of human capital. In addition, a large number of them came when deindustrialisation had run its course and the Dutch economy, the service sector in particular, started growing again after 1985. On the basis of the Mixed Embeddedness model, we expected that the combination of, on average, higher levels of human capital and the transformation of the (urban)economy, would lead to rather different patterns of entrepreneurship when compared to their predecessors who came as guest workers. We explored this issue using interviews with 84 Ghanaian entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. Our data only partly corroborated our hypotheses. Notwithstanding, the higher levels of human capital and the shifts in the urban economies, a significant number of Ghanaian entrepreneurs still end up in the lower echelons of the opportunity structure.

New migrant businesses and their workers: developing, but not transforming, the ethnic economy

Abstract: Studies of businesses established by migrants to the UK traditionally stressed co-ethnic relationships as economic resources. More recent work identifies a new ethnic economy characterized by migrants’ common experiences, with ethnicity playing less of a role. The present study complements this newer perspective through investigation of the experiences of forty-nine business owners and sixty of their workers in the West Midlands. Economic relationships were central to the operation of migrant firms, and a minority of firms escaped from sectors traditionally dominated by migrant firms. Yet substantial continuity was also evident, including exclusion from the mainstream on ethnic lines and relations with workers characterized by informality. Migrant business is evolving but it retains many of its features; this pattern can be explained by combining the mixed embeddedness theory of the enterprise with labour process analysis.

Students climbing the entrepreneurial ladder: Family social capital and environment-related motives in hospitality and tourism

Abstract: Purpose This paper aims to address the research question of whether family social capital affects the degree of engagement in the entrepreneurial process in the case of hospitality and tourism (H&T) new ventures, and how this relates to environment-related motivations. In particular, drawing on a process-based approach of individuals’ engagement in entrepreneurship, this paper provides new insights into the relationship between the perception of support by the family through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital and the decision to engage in the entrepreneurial process. The main contribution consists in the role of “following an environmental mission” that emerges as a motivation mediating the relationship between family resource provision and entrepreneurial engagement in the H&T industry. Design/methodology/approach For this exploratory study, we rely on cross-sectional observations from 2,923 individuals gathered through the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students Survey, which collects information on career choices and preferences of university students around the globe. Given our focus on the early engagement process in entrepreneurship and the role of embeddedness in family structures, the use of a sample of young potential entrepreneurs such as students is particularly appropriate. Findings This study suggests that the family acts as a fundamental institution fostering entrepreneurship, both through the provision of bonding and bridging social capital, and the nurturing of attitudes toward the environment. The results indicate that, in the H&T industry, entrepreneurship can be a valuable means to pursue such attitude and is perceived as a way to proactively contribute to undertake responsible environmental activities. Research limitations/implications The study provides some implications for researchers, educators and policymakers interested in fostering entrepreneurial initiatives in the field, considering the role of a social-oriented mission as a vehicle to encourage profit-oriented entrepreneurial initiatives, and the importance of the family as a resource provider that fosters entrepreneurial engagement. The paper also discusses the strengths and limitations of this unique and broad cross-national sample. Originality/value Becoming entrepreneurs is depicted as climbing an entrepreneurial “ladder”, whereby each individual’s engagement along this process depends on a number of antecedents. Family bridging and bonding social capital, as well as following an environmental mission, emerge as important factors in the H&T industry, thus extending previous literature on the distinctiveness of this industry.

International retailing as embedded business models

Abstract: As retailers internationalize they interact with diverse socio-political-economic environ- ments and the activities, processes, behaviours and outputs underpinning their business models evolve over time and space. Retailers are not passive, and through managerial agency they interpret the environment to compete and further their own commercial aims. Consequently, mutual interaction with the host environment means that changes may also occur in the established institutional norms in a market. Most existing studies have focused on the implications of territorial embeddedness for internationalizing retailers. In this article we also consider the societal and network forms of embeddedness identified by Hess, and illustrate how retailers transfer, negotiate and adapt their business model as they embed themselves in different institutional environments. A case study of IKEA is used to illustrate the synthesis of these two frameworks. (Less)