Embeddedness

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

Stitched on the Edge: Rule Evasion, Embedded Regulators, and the Evolution of Markets

Abstract: While the role of laws and regulations in structuring markets is well established, it is less understood how rule evasion affects the evolution of markets or how the interaction between regulators and the regulated about the meaning of compliance influences this effect. The authors study this issue by looking at the development of the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in France, Germany, and the Netherlands from 1999 to 2009. In all three countries, this market involved financial innovations designed to evade regulations. The authors identify diverging trends in the ABCP market that are a result of whether and how regulators were embedded in the different interpretive communities that defined regulatory compliance, such embeddedness being dependent on their discretionary and sanctioning power as well as their expertise. Focusing on these regulatory networks that embed institutions in markets, they propose a synthesis of relational and institutional accounts of the embeddedness of markets.

The embeddedness of strategy

Abstract: This volume is part of a series which seeks to act as a vehicle for the communication of research in strategic management It contains papers presenting theoretical and/or empirical analysis of strategic problems, comparative and analytical case studies of issues and application of concepts

Firm Performance, Innovation Modes and Territorial Embeddedness

Abstract: This paper seeks to identify different innovation modes and their territorial embeddedness, relating them to firms’ innovative and economic performance. We also analyse the relationship between the different innovation modes and the economic impact of the crisis on firms’ performance. These relationships are tested by regression and latent class models for the Portuguese population of firms, using a sample of 397 firms classified according to technological intensity, size and region. Our results show three different innovation modes: a DUI (Doing, Using and Interacting) mode, an STI (Science, Technology and Innovation) mode and a TEI (Territorial Embeddedness Innovation) mode in which territory plays a key role. These innovative modes are related in different ways to firms’ economic and innovative performance and also have marked distinctions in terms of resilience to the economic crisis. These findings lead to a reflection on regional innovation policy in the European context.

Allies of the State: China's Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change

Abstract: Allies of the State: China's Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change, by Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. xii + 220 pp. US$45.00/£33.95/euro40.50 (hardcover). Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson have produced a thought-provoking and wellwritten book that examines the potential democratic tendencies of the controlling managers of China's large private enterprises. Based on thorough surveys of hundreds of entrepreneurs in five different provinces, they come to a sobering conclusion: "China's capitalists are unlikely to be agents of [democratic] change because their support for the current regime is stronger than their support for an alternative democratic political system" (p. 158). Yet they also note that, if the Chinese Party-state fails to address serious issues that affect private entrepreneurs' lives, such as official corruption and policies that discriminate against private businesses, this support for the current regime could evaporate (pp. 159-60). After an admirably concise and illuminating history of the private sector in China since 1978 (Chapter 2), Chen and Dickson approach their conclusions from several different angles. Chapter 3 looks at the "embeddedness" of Chinese private entrepreneurs within various government institutions, such as the CCP, national/local people's congresses and political consultative committees, and state-sponsored NGOs like business associations. They find a very high level of membership in all these organizations - some arresting statistics are that 37.8 per cent of surveyed entrepreneurs were CCP members in 2007 (p. 41). Likewise, 18.2 per cent and 20.7 per cent respectively of surveyed entrepreneurs were members of people's congresses or political consultative committees (p. 54). These high figures should be less surprising when we find that significant numbers of Chinese private entrepreneurs were actually former government officials (19 per cent), and a majority of them previously managed or worked for state enterprises (51 per cent) (p. 35). Indeed, these kinds of statistics suggest that the use of the term "private entrepreneurs" to describe many of these people may be misleading. Chapter 4 analyzes the sensitive topic of support for democracy among China's "capitalists" (which may be a more accurate term). Chen and Dickson use two different kinds of questions designed to distinguish between support for further democratic reforms within the current one-Party system, which is widespread among the surveyed entrepreneurs (p. 73), and support for a multiparty democracy with its greater tolerance for dissent and contention, which is much weaker among entrepreneurs (p. 76). While such conclusions might be expected here, given the political embeddedness of many of the respondents, one could challenge these results on two fronts. Firstly, the questions in the second category are clearly loaded: for example, "if a country has multiple parties (hao ji ge zhengdang), it can lead to political chaos" (pp. 74, 167). Why not instead ask whether a country should have two main parties (as in the US), rather than "multiple parties" with their built-in connotations of Italian-style political disorder? Other questions in this part of the survey are similarly weighted towards the contentious and negative aspects of democratic change, for example, "public demonstrations can easily tum into social disturbances and impact social stability and should be forbidden" (p. 76). Second, apart from the question design, the interpretation of the survey results given here could also be challenged. For the above question on multiple parties, 28 per cent of respondents disagreed that this would lead to political chaos (p. 74). In other words, over a quarter of surveyed capitalists appear to believe that "multiple" political parties are not harmful. …