Embeddedness

About: Embeddedness is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4773 publications have been published within this topic receiving 229721 citations.

Economics invents the economy: Mathematics, statistics, and models in the work of Irving Fisher and Wesley Mitchell

Abstract: The “embeddedness” of economic life in social relations has become a productive analytical principle and the basis of a penetrating critique of economic orthodoxy. But this critique raises another important, social and historical question, of how the economy became “disembedded” in the first place – how the multitude of transactions designated (somewhat arbitrarily) as economic were abstracted from the rest of social life and reconstituted as an object, the economy, which behaves according to its own logic. This article investigates the social sources of some innovations in economic thought that contributed to the emergence of the economy, particularly statistical indicators and mechanical models. By examining the redefinitions of the object of economic research developed by Irving Fisher and Wesley Mitchell in the 1890s and the first decades of the twentieth century, I argue that the abstraction of the economy from the remainder of social life was a strategy linked to the position of these innovators within the field of economics, conceived as a social structure. Possessing a specialized scientific cultural capital, but lacking upper class background, contacts, and dispositions that characterized the founders of academic economics, Fisher and Mitchell elaborated new definitions of their discipline's object of study, and a new type of economic expertise.

Global Production Networks and Local Institution Building: The Development of the Information-Technology Industry in Suzhou, China:

Abstract: We discuss how global production networks interact with local institutions to shape the ways in which economic development occurs within a region; the region concerned being the Suzhou municipality in China. We argue that the development of Suzhou's information-technology industry has largely resulted from (1) the transformation of global production networks in the 1990s, in which Taiwanese firms played an important role; (2) the local states' active role in transforming local institutions to fit the needs of foreign firms; and (3) Taiwanese investors' engagement in mediating and transplanting related institutions into the locality to meet the demand of global logistics for speed and flexibility. All these have resulted in Suzhou municipality's rapid growth in the information-technology industry and its embeddedness in the fusion of the global and local contexts. However, we will also demonstrate that the power asymmetry of global players and local states in this area has resulted in the creation of industrial clusters that are institutionally embedded but technologically delinked from the localities.

Keeping at Arm’s Length or Searching for Social Proximity? Corporate Social Responsibility as a Reciprocal Process Between Small Businesses and the Local Community

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility and locality in the small business context. This issue is addressed by studying the interplay between small businesses and local community based on the embeddedness literature and using the concept of social proximity. On the basis of 25 thematic interviews with owner-managers a typology is constructed which illustrates the owner-managers’ perceptions of the relationship between the business and the local community. The findings emphasize the importance of reciprocity as it is suggested that corporate social responsibility in relation to locality is constructed as a response to the interpretations of reciprocal community support between small business owner-managers and local community.

The degree of decentralization and individual decision making in central government human resource management: a european comparative perspective

Abstract: This article reports a comparative study of human resource management (HRM) practices in Europe. We focus on the extent to which decision-making authority is decentralized, that is, passed down to management, and individualized in the sense of being in the discretion of a single decision maker. Using these two dimensions, this paper gives a picture of the distinct way HR decision-making practices are organized in Europe: although decentralization has been a common goal of modernization initiatives, we still find a rather high degree of centralization. Moreover, we find that decentralized decision making frequently goes hand in hand with a higher degree of shared decision making. In addition, we examine the influence of several cultural and institutional factors to address the question of embeddedness in more detail. Our results show that national culture, administrative traditions and institutional arrangements play an important role as explanatory factors for the organization of HR decision-making in Europe.

Collective efficiency, policy inducement and social embeddedness: Drivers for the development of industrial districts

Abstract: Where is the future of traditional industrial districts in global markets where competition is fiercer every day? This paper presents the case of the furniture district of Forli, Italy, as a means to explain the development process, the constraints and the growth prospects that involve this industrial district and, perhaps, a wider variety of districts and SME-based clusters. We hypothesise that development is more likely to be generated when three main drivers, taken from the main bodies of literature on districts and clusters, are taken together: ‘collective efficiency’, ‘policy inducement’ and ‘social embeddedness’. The case study of Forli helps to identify the trajectory of one among many Italian industrial districts and its solutions to deal with the new competition. Yet, our approach highlights some of the main difficulties that this district is facing nowadays and the related challenges for future development. The general lesson derived from this analysis is that traditional ways of regarding clust...