Embeddedness

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

The evolving institutional embeddedness of a late-industrial district in taiwan: the evolving institutional embeddedness

Abstract: The high-technology industrial system in Taiwan is noted by its decentralisation and geographical agglomeration. It demonstrates varieties of features of industrial district: spin-offs, collaborations, networking, and most importantly, institutional presences. At the initial stage, Taiwan's Govern-ment did lead in the technology transfer, rendered new firms formation and pushed the private sector hard to bring the industry into being. However, as the industry became global, new redundant and complementary institutions, including dense social and professional connections and associations, joined the monotonic role of the state to make network learning in the decen-tralised industrial system effective. It represented a developmental paradox: if the developmental state is argued to be a top-down bureaucratic rationality based governance mechanism, how could it build up and articulate with the supposedly bottom-up trust-based social networks? How could the potential tension between the top-down and the bottom-up be settled? The research will explore the process of institutional embeddedness, de-embeddedness, and re-embeddedness in Taiwan's high-technology region, and provide a lesson for the late-industrialising countries in the globalisation era.

Towards Regionally Embedded Innovation Support Systems in South Korea? Case Studies from Kyongbuk-Taegu and Kyonggi

Abstract: Since the beginning of the 1990s, systems of innovation have been used as a framework to explain differences in innovativeness between firms, industries and economies at local, regional, national and supranational levels. The main argument behind the discussions around systems of innovation is that firms are increasingly dependent on institutions in their direct environment for their innovativeness and thus competitiveness. In regional innovation systems, firms and other organisations are systematically engaged in interactive learning through an institutional milieu characterised by embeddedness. On the basis of these systems' governance infrastructure, a typology can be developed consisting of grassroots systems (with the highest level of regional embeddedness), integrated systems and dirigiste systems (with the lowest level of regional embeddedness). Based on empirical research on innovation support agencies in Kyongbuk-Taegu and Kyonggi, this paper shows that South Korea is characterised by dirigiste r...

Financial Knowledge, Documents, and the Structures of Financial Activities:

Abstract: Starting from participant observation and interviews conducted in several European banks, the article examines how financial knowledge is constituted in the process of producing documents like research reports, analyses, and newsletters. The core argument is that documents act as organizational devices, with the help of which relationships are created, maintained, and managed across various contexts. In this perspective, the production of financial reports, analyses, and newsletters creates (1) knowledge-based networks of social relationships in which financial action is embedded and (2) stable temporal structures, thus ensuring the continuity of financial activities. On these grounds, the author argues here that knowledge-generating processes should be taken into account as an essential dimension of the structural embeddedness of financial action.

Transnational learning structures in multinational firms: Organizational context and national embeddedness:

Abstract: The role of national institutional context is often overlooked in analyses of learning behaviour in multinational organizations. Drawing on arguments from institutional theory and learning theory we consider the organizational contingencies, and the institutional context in which these are embedded, in explaining the use of structures to support learning across national borders. It is hypothesized that country of origin effects on subsidiary learning structures are mediated by two organizational contingencies, namely transnational human resource management governance structures and subsidiary global research and development expertise. To test this, structural equation modelling is used on a dataset of 292 foreign (including Japanese, US, French, German, Nordic) and home-owned subsidiaries operating in the UK. The results confirmed the hypothesized institutional effects. The evidence suggests that understanding the interaction between institutional and firm-level context is important in providing a fuller ...

Transnational Corporations and Business Networks: Hong Kong Firms in the ASEAN Region

Abstract: Given the increasingly important role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the global economy as well as in economic development, it is not surprising that TNCs and their operations have become the focus of many academic studies. The activities of TNCs have been particularly well documented but, as argued by the author of this book, largely from a western-centric perspective. This view has been presented "not as geographically and historically specific but as the norm from which all others are an aberration." (p. xv) Henry Yeung, in this book, presents compelling arguments that the activities of TNCs from Hong Kong (HKTNCs) pose a fundamental challenge to the conventional wisdom about "Third World multinationals". In this study of HKTNCs, Yeung argues that the different conceptualizations of TNCs (read "western") as "firms that rely upon networks as a form of organising activities" (p. 7) or as "enterprises which control assets - factories, mines, sales office and the like - in two or more countries (UNCTC 1978, p. 158 as quoted in Yeung 1998, p. 7) or as firms which co-ordinate production across national boundaries without using market exchange (p. 7) leads to a conceptual ambiguity. Yeung thus sets himself the task of developing a network approach to the understanding of TNCs through a deconstruction of existing Westerncentric perspectives and a rebuilding of a generic network perspective to take account of time-space specificities in transnational operations (p. 3). Yeung also argues that Third World multinationals have been misleadingly stereotyped as "very small in their assets and sales, labour-intensive in their operations, low in technological capabilities and restricted in geographical coverage" (p. 3). However, this contention is not directly addressed in the book as one would have expected. The background upon which Yeung seeks to explain the role of business networks in HKTNCs is richly prepared through his analysis of the emergence of transnational corporations from Asian Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs). He maps out the geographical distribution of TNCs from Asian NIEs and also identifies the main characteristics and competitive advantage of these TNCs. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Yeung's approach to the study of TNCs is the concept of the TNC simultaneously as "a form (italics in original) of (international) business organisation and a process (italics :in original) of organising (international) business" (p. 65) because it takes into account the dynamics of TNC activities. However, while the "economies of synergy" (p. 65) provide a powerful incentive for network creation, some of the strengths that Yeung attributes to HKTNCs may relate more to alliances rather than individual TNCs to the extent that there is a blurring of the analytical unit. He points out that in the context of business networks, the TNC is both a nc,dal point on intricate inter- and extra-firm networks as well as a dense network of intra-firm relationships in its own right (p. 66). Yeung's work explains the motivations of HKTNCs to invest in the ASEAN region and their subsequent success in these ventures to be a function of the embeddedness of these firms' networks. Little is known about those HKTNCs, if they exist, that have succeeded without this emphasis on networks or even those that have failed in spite of strong networks. In the same vein, the author himself has highlighted an implicit question that remains unanswered in his book, that is, to what extent are non-Chinese HKTNCs embedded in the peculiar Chinese business system? This raises a related question - how different are the firms presently under indigenous Hong Kong ownership from when they were owned by the British hongs or colonial trading houses? …