Embeddedness

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

The Embeddedness of Collective Action in Nepalese Community Forestry

Abstract: Collective action by local communities has been recognised as crucial for effective management of natural resources, particularly the management of forests in rural settings in developing countries. However, the processes and outcomes of collective action in forest management are often analysed through a narrow rational choice model, ignoring the impacts of wider social, political and economic processes in conditioning peoples’ decisions to act (or not to act) collectively. Optimistic assumptions are made for collective action being instrumental to enhance both social and ecological outcomes, but there is a paucity of empirical evidence on how and why the condition of forests has improved (or deteriorated) under collective action, and what impacts the change in forest condition has on various groups within local communities. This study critically examines the emergence, evolution and outcomes of collective action in a case of community forestry in Nepal. A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods has been used to collect primary data from the forest, households, key informants and focus groups. The emergence and outcomes of collective action is found to be embedded in social, economic and political relationships, where powerful actors control the use of forests in order to ensure conservation, thereby resulting in the underutilisation of forest products. Poor users, who depend heavily on forests, are found to be worse off economically under community forestry, but still engage in collective action for a variety of socio-political reasons. This contradicts the conventional wisdom which assumes that people only cooperate when they benefit from cooperation. It is concluded that a deeper understanding of the embeddedness of community forestry is needed in order to achieve the potential of collective action.

The Political Economy of Social Pacts in the EMU: Irish Liberal Market Corporatism in Crisis

Abstract: The economic crisis is a collective action problem. In the absence of currency devaluations, eurozone governments are faced with the painful social process of wage devaluations. This paper examines the strategic choices facing the government and organised labour in how they respond to this problem. It will argue that the European Monetary Union contains an implicit neoclassical assumption that labour markets will automatically adjust to downward wage flexibility. This ignores the politics of collective bargaining. Labour relations systems are the most regulated of all markets. Based on this institutional embeddedness, the paper will outline a typology of political choices facing national governments: neoliberal market adjustment, national or sectoral concertation and euro-coordination. Institutional pre-conditions of collective bargaining mediate what strategy governments adopt. It will subsequently examine the case of Ireland that tried and failed to negotiate a national pact in 2009. Social partnership ...

On-the-job embeddedness as a mediator between conscientiousness and school teachers' contextual performance

Abstract: The recently introduced concept of job embeddedness has been shown to predict various organizational outcomes. In prediction models, its usual role is that of an antecedent explaining variance beyond commonly used attitudinal measures. Using social information processing theory as a framework, the present study examines on-the-job embeddedness (ONJE) as a potential mediator in predicting performance within an educational framework. Analysis of a multisource evaluation scheme applied to 115 school teachers supported the expectation that conscientiousness and ONJE are predictors of task and contextual performance. Moreover, ONJE was found to serve as a mediator by providing a partial explanation for the link between conscientiousness and contextual performance. Future research with other attitudinal and personality measures is suggested to broaden the role that ONJE plays in predicting performance.

International embeddedness of European multi-level governance

Abstract: The focus of this article is to find out how governance functions in an expanded multi-level system. The aim is to analyse institutional change within the EU which is caused by the EU's international embeddedness. The paper develops and empirically tests the hypothesis that embeddedness of the EU within an international context does not only affect the formal organization of the European decision- making process. It includes effects on routines, guiding ideas and concepts of legitimate order as well. The World Trade Organization (WTO) serves as a case to analyse these effects. The empirical research covers the overall European institutional changes within the different issue-areas of WTO (GATT, TRIPS and GATS), including its dispute settlement system, as well as the discussion about the involvement of civil society in the WTO's decision-making and its effects on the EU.