Concept Of Embeddedness Research Articles

Disembedded or Deeply Embedded? A Multi-Level Network Analysis of Online Labour Platforms

This article extends the economic-sociological concept of embeddedness to encompass not only social networks of, for example, friendship or kinship ties, but also economic networks of ownership and control relationships. Applying these ideas to the case of digital platform labour pinpoints two possible scenarios. When platforms take the role of market intermediaries, economic ties are thin and workers are left to their own devices, in a form of ‘disembeddedness’. When platforms partake in intricate inter-firm outsourcing structures, economic ties envelop workers in a ‘deep embeddedness’ which involves both stronger constraints and higher rewards. With this added dimension, the notion of embeddedness becomes a compelling tool to describe the social structures that frame economic action, including the power imbalances that characterize digital labour in the global economy.

The unexpected persistence of non-corporate platforms: The role of local and network embeddedness

The Covid19-pandemic has accelerated processes in which digital platforms, privileged by their critical size, become central instances of urban life. While most scholars associate platform urbanism with transnational platform corporations, such as Amazon or Facebook, local non-corporate platforms unexpectedly persist despite lacking critical size. This article analyzes processes through which non-corporate platforms are created, maintained, disseminated, and locally implemented; given this type of platform's absence of critical size. We explain the persistence of local non-corporate platforms by drawing on the concept of embeddedness. Embeddedness accounts for non-market-based, i.e. socially and culturally influenced behavior, that shapes economic interactions. We distinguish between network embeddedness, in which organizations maintain permanent and exclusive relationships with one another, and local embeddedness, which combines Hess' (2004) notions of societal embeddedness and territorial embeddedness. This article is empirically grounded on an analysis of two most different ways of creating and maintaining, disseminating, and locally implementing non-corporate platforms: Platform cooperativism and free/libre open-source software-based platforms (FLOSS-based platforms). Two empirical case studies of collaboratively governed Western-European non-corporate platforms, Gebiedonline and Decidim, respectively inform the analysis of platform cooperativism and FLOSS-based platforms. Gebiedonline is a platform cooperative through which neighborhood and theme-specific platforms are created. Decidim is a FLOSS-based platform that is mainly used for civic and political participation processes. We find that governments and civil society stakeholders create non-corporate platform technology by disentangling processes related to the creation, maintenance, and dissemination of platform technology from platform implementation processes. Following platform creation, platform maintenance is embedded in a network. Non-corporate platforms pool cost-intensive technology maintenance, while platform implementation necessarily takes place in a locally embedded manner.

Viewing embeddedness and ethnic-solidarity in economics of exchange: reflections from economic and cultural practices of tibetan community in India

ABSTRACT Karl Polanyi argues that the discipline of economics has emerged from the observations of human beings and their practices existing in a society. Since humans are perceived primarily as social beings rather than economic ones, embeddedness is a necessary and basic condition of the economy. This paper is an attempt to observe study and understand the inter-sectional application of these concepts of embeddedness and ethnic solidarity, in the socio-economic context of the Tibetan refugee community residing in India. Our study’s fieldwork was focused on observing the functioning of the local Tibetan economy in Mcleodganj (Dharamshala), where two Tibetan knowledge systems: the Thangka art and the Tibetan healing system were closely studied, reflecting Tibetan culture, and the community’s effort to preserve and promote these knowledge systems in different economic forms.

Is education for all? The experiences of ethnic minority students and teachers in North-western Vietnam engaging with social entrepreneurship

This paper discusses the challenges teachers and ethnic minority students face living in rural North-western Vietnam and how social entrepreneurship can mitigate these. The data was gathered through 33 interviews (teachers N = 10; students N = 20; parents of a student N = 2; social entrepreneur N = 1). The data were analysed using thematic analysis, drawing from Fraser’s (2010) justice model. The paper also links to Granovetter’s (1985, 2005) social embeddedness concept, to emphasise how social enterprise enabled socio-economic networks can support ethnic minority students to overcome redistribution, representation and recognition problems. The paper makes an original contribution by showing how socio-economic networks enhance weak-ties and bridge resources to empower the socially disadvantaged to achieve educational inclusion.

O “Problema da Imersão” nos Estudos do Empreendedorismo: Uma Proposição Teórica

RESUMO Objetivo o artigo procura investigar o conceito de imersão e sua influência aos estudos do empreendedorismo. Metodologia o trabalho, um ensaio teórico, apropria-se da literatura sobre embeddedness de Granovetter, e associa-a a proposições clássicas da sociologia econômica de Karl Polanyi. Reflexões relacionadas às estruturas de reciprocidade e redistribuição são, aí, enfatizadas. Resultados evidências sugerem que o conceito de imersão de Granovetter acaba por não romper com a lógica utilitarista que caracteriza os estudos subsocializados dos quais critica. O mesmo ocorre quando o conceito é empregado por pesquisadores do empreendedorismo. Embora implícita à origem da associação entre “imersão e empreendedorismo” se encontre a noção do empreendedor enquanto criador de redes, isto é, como agente influenciado pelos recursos derivados das estruturas nas quais se encontram imersos, estudiosos da área acabam por endossar o pressuposto do ator interessado. Conclusões o artigo chama a atenção dos pesquisadores do empreendedorismo para a repercussão, ainda pouco explorada, de outros tipos de imersão social (Reciprocidade e Redistribuição). Ao mesmo tempo, sugere por meio da “imersão total” a criação de novo modelo analítico, eventualmente capaz de ampliar as reflexões sobre as influências da imersão em diferentes estruturas à trajetória empreendedora. Finaliza com novas proposições, com destaque para abordagens e sugestões de investigações ainda hoje inexploradas. Classificação JEL: L26, A2, L21.

Embedded Enclaves? Initial Implications of Development of Special Economic Zones in Myanmar

Special economic zones (SEZs) are geographically delimited areas in a country that are subject to differing business rules as otherwise applicable in the national territory. This study discusses the role of SEZs in the economic policy of Myanmar. Despite the fact that SEZs are often perceived as enclaves of industry having little effect on the national economic landscape, their success in practice depends to a large extent on their interdependence with the surrounding economy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to initially apply the embeddedness concept to SEZs and therewith attempt to discuss probable implications of SEZs. The development of SEZs entails a number of weaknesses when assessed on their ability to enhance economic development, mainly because the quality of employment opportunities created is low and the quality of sustainable and lasting development, in general, is questionable. Although initial findings suggest that Thilawa SEZ, one of the three planned zones and currently the only one being in operation in Myanmar, has made some positive attempts to create jobs, transfer knowledge, and strengthen the country’s industrial infrastructure, there are some limits to positive external benefits flowing from SEZs in general. It is argued that consideration of the embeddedness concept proves helpful in gaining a more nuanced understanding of the interlinkage processes involved. More importantly, despite the perception of SEZs as enclaves, the specifics of their embeddedness reveal numerous directions for future research. These findings have important policy implications for Myanmar’s attempt at bringing about structural change and enhanced economic development.

The BRICS’s Bank, Institutional Framework, and Other Current Limitations

:Based on Polanyi’s concepts of embeddedness, disembeddedness, and the double movement, the aim of this article is to show that the new development bank (NDB) established by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (grouped as BRICS) lacks an institutional context to spur growth and development, similar to the growth that occurred during the Bretton Woods era. First, I examine some of the BRICS’s strengths, such as growth rates, share of world GDP (gross domestic product), and the level international reserves as a percent of the world total. Second, I outline the BRICS’s and other Third World countries’ need for financing. I maintain that the main flaw in the BRICS’s bank is that it follows market rationality in obtaining and granting resources, and that China (the most important member of the BRICS) is still dependent on the G7’s economies. Finally, I remark that as long as the NDB follows market fundamentals, it will be less likely to achieve growth.

Relational Habitat: A Conceptual Contribution to Economic Sociology

ABSTRACTElaborating on the concept of embeddedness, this article proposes the notion of relational habitat, which denotes the relatively durable constellation of ongoing, specialized relations developed and sustained by a firm. This constellation is basically a protective social device, which by sufficiently stabilizing and simplifying the immediate operational environment of the embedded firm considerably relaxes the constraints imposed on its action capacity. The core argument is that by expanding the control of the firm beyond its organizational borders, the relational habitat enhances the ability of the firm to successfully pursue the adopted business plans and secure the intended outcomes. The notion is proposed to provide the analytical specification needed for understanding firm behavior as an emergent outcome of the enabling as well as constraining relational context that embeds the firm.

Multidimensional analysis of embeddedness and cooperation in a cluster – a literature and empirical study

Cooperation of enterprises within inter-organizational networks is a complex research and cognitive area due to the multidimensional nature of cooperation, which is often a mixture of motives, intentions, goals and operating conditions. Literature studies have revealed the so far very meager and scattered work in the field of embedding cooperation between enterprises in inter-organizational networks, which definitely does not sufficiently describe the impact of the context of collaboration on enterprise cooperation. The main aim of the article was to understand and explain, on the basis of the concept of embeddedness, whether there are relations between the participation of enterprises in a cluster-type inter-organizational network (embeddedness and its dimensions) and their cooperation in the cluster. Implementation of research goals required the development of a research process covering three stages. The essence and dimensions of embeddedness of cooperating enterprises in inter-organizational networks (structural, relational, social, positional, territorial, geographical, spatial, institutional, ecological, political and temporal) were determined. Next, a survey of European cluster managers (study 1) on cooperation in a cluster was carried out in order to better understand the dimensions of embeddedness of enterprises cooperating in clusters (qualitative research, IDI). In the next stage, a survey of cluster enterprises was carried out (study 2) to determine the relations between their embeddedness in the cluster and cooperation with other cluster companies (quantitative research, CAWI). Then, triangulation of data sources, research methods and context was used. As a result, it was established that four dimensions of embeddedness are of key importance for cooperating enterprises embedded in the cluster, namely: structural, geographical, institutional and relational. Moreover, the results of the research show that there is a positive relation between embedding enterprises in the cluster and their cooperation.

Islamic banking in the United Arab Emirates: Is embeddedness a contextual antecedent of performance and corporate governance outcomes?

Research issue and theoretical foundation<br/> Embeddedness refers to the financial, operational and structural mooring of an organisation in a particular social system or community. It presents itself as a central tenet of Williamson's (1975) classic theory of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and as such is a concept long overdue attention. In this paper, this concept is problematised as a macro- or organisation-level construct, and the paper also explores some of its consequents.<br/> Findings of the study<br/> Using a thick description approach, case study evidence is built for the Islamic Banking (IB) business model. It is shown how this indigenous business model (i.e., IB) has leveraged the power of social networks to build a profitable portfolio of investments over time, in the specific context of the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and its unique socio-political and cultural aspects. Dimensions of the embeddedness construct are proposed. Further, causal linkages are theorised with two distinct but inter-related consequents of embeddedness: corporate governance and performance outcomes of the organisation. It is envisaged that both linkages are mediated by the construct of board interlocks.<br/> Implications<br/> Proximally, this study has the potential to extend scholarship in the domains of business relations, trust and indigenous business models. As a distal possibility, researchers might use it to build on the organisational ecosystem paradigm.<br/> Scope and contributions<br/> The main contribution is to develop the concept of embeddedness. Additionally, this study uses the concept to build contextualised theory pertaining to the network characteristics of an indigenous business model.

Dynamic Processes of Territorial Embeddedness in International Online Fashion Retailing

abstractGlobal retail expansion involves dynamic relations between retailers and variegated institutional, competitive, and consumer-based demands across different spatial scales. Economic geographers have framed these processes through the interrelated concepts of territorial, network, and societal embeddedness of store-based retailers, but with a neglect of online retail transnational corporations, which might enter overseas markets with minimal risk and sunk cost. This research assesses the relevance of concepts of embeddedness in the light of virtual retail networks by assessing how knowledge from the home market mediates any perceived need to localize within host-market consumer cultures and institutions to achieve legitimacy, and, in turn, whether these activities might occur as a virtual or physical process. We undertook extensive case study research within five leading international online fashion retailers headquartered in the UK, involving fifty-five semistructured interviews with chief executives, and with managing, operations, buying, and merchandising directors. Our findings reveal market entry to be dominated by an inward-looking societal embeddedness approach with limited investment in overseas physical infrastructure and personnel, since the management of product ranges and pricing, along with merchandise fulfillment, typically reside in the home market. Yet, with international experience, we conceptualize a staged and currently limited investment in territorial embeddedness through local subsidiary offices critical to realizing network embeddedness with the fashion media and the reorganization of fulfillment within some key host countries and wider supranational regions. Such developments demand increased investment and a decentralization of authority that will, in turn, likely necessitate significant reorganization of these emergent international firms.

What can ESL offer to the data collector? Describing, defining, designing and deploying an alternative ESL approach

For the World Bank, the importance of the legal climate for attracting foreign investment is axiomatic and the legal and political aspects of an investment climate are measured in the World Bank’s ‘good governance’ programme. However, the assumptions underlying this rely on quantitative research setting out correlation and highlighting a narrow range of voices. An ESL-inspired approach to empirical work can question what investors want from a host state legal system while also addressing criticisms of existing literature. As a case study, Sri Lanka is set out as a country actively engaged in attracting foreign investment through the creation of an ideal investment climate. 
 The discussion first describes the empirical by setting out the role of World Bank rationalities in shaping Sri Lanka’s investment climate. It then defines the analytical, locating ESL in the social sciences and outlining the debates surrounding the central concept of embeddedness. It goes on to design an alternative approach by combining elements of three frames, both addressing existing criticisms and avoiding embeddedness. This is then deployed and the applications and implications for framing relations of foreign investors in Sri Lanka are set out.

The Always Embedded State: Six Types of State-Society Interaction

Abstract This paper offers a critical analysis of the concept of embeddedness as currently used in political sociology and state theory. It argues that the concept of embeddedness can be successfully used to solve a current theoretical impasse – namely, how to conceptualize statesociety relations. The paper creates a conceptual space at the intersection of two axes of variation: the pattern of embeddedness (mono-versus multi-embeddedness) and the degree of state autonomy (captive versus autonomous). A central finding of this paper is that at least six types of embeddedness can be shown to exist in this conceptual space. In the remainder of the paper, the six types are described using a range of evidence extracted from the literature. One major advantage of the proposed typology is that it is able to incorporate, under the same umbrella, a variety of preexisting approaches of state-society interactions.

Improving business resilience through organizational embeddedness in CSR

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of embeddedness, highlight its connection with corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, and argue for its importance in securing and strengthening organizational resiliency.Design/methodology/approachEmbeddedness and CSR are both well-researched topics but have been typically addressed on separate literature streams. The paper draws upon this diverse literature to introduce a conceptual framework for embeddedness in CSR.FindingsThe paper illustrates the importance of embeddedness and how it can enhance existing CSR strategies. A strongly embedded organization becomes deeply rooted on its socio-economic and natural environments, thus setting a symbiotic relationship that extends beyond any narrowly defined business purposes. Strong embeddedness has the potential to increase and further expand any CSR-related benefits while shielding the firm from economic downturns and thus increasing its resilience.Originality/valueThe paper builds upon CSR literature by incorporating the concept of embeddedness and then proposing how such an approach can strengthen an organization and increase its resilience.

Ethnic groups, urban places, and retail enterprise: the United States, 1900

ABSTRACTThis study proposes an entrepreneurship model that (1) uses sociological literature on ethnic stratification to develop a typology of subdominant, marginalized, subordinate, and outcast minority groups and (2) applies geographic principles to spatially define variation in entrepreneurial environments in terms of urban hierarchies, regional milieus, and hinterland centres. Examining retail enterprise, the study utilizes the interactionist approach, which holds that ethnic business differences result from an interplay of groups’ attributes (supply) and locations’ opportunity structures (demand). The study extends this approach by incorporating the mixed embeddedness concept, which stresses the importance of ethnic groups’ situation in broad social, political, and institutional contexts. Regression analyses of Census data for US cities in 1900 show why retail enterprise among outcast minorities is demand-side resistant, while retail enterprise among marginalized minorities is demand-side reactive. The model thus yields insights into how ethnic stratification and geographical positions interact to produce inequalities of ethnic entrepreneurship.

The embedding forces of network commitment: An examination of the psychological processes linking advice centrality and susceptibility to social influence

We draw on concepts of embeddedness and commitment to explain people's susceptibility to social influence from their personal network. Using two samples and multiple methods (experimental manipulation, social network inventories, and surveys) we assess whether embeddedness in one's social network (i.e., advice centrality) affects susceptibility to social influence, via commitment to one's personal network. We extend concepts of affective, normative, and instrumental commitment to an individual’s personal network for this purpose. In Study 1, we experimentally manipulate normative social information and find that central members are more likely to conform to social influence, according to mechanisms of psychological affective and instrumental network commitment. Study 2 tests the robustness of our generalized predictions by considering how advice centrality relates to one’s aggregate dyadic network commitments and perceived social influence. Study 2 results indicate that advice centrality positively relates to perceived social influence through relational affective, normative, and instrumental network commitment.

Democracy disembedded

Democracy is in serious difficulties. Three features of the crisis stand out. First is the dominant culture of disillusionment in democracy, which transpires as the mistrust in constitutionalist institutions and values. Second, political authority, both at domestic and international levels, is largely substituted by the rule of non-transparent and unpredictable social powers. Third, democratic states are deprived of much of their capacity to govern, but they retain a non-negligible capacity to coerce. The article is structured as follows. Section I introduces Karl Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and juxtaposes it to the theoretical defense of market disembeddedness advanced by the classical political economy. It then points to the challenge that the complexity of the contemporary society poses to the idea of embeddedness and identifies the need for further analytical clarification of the idea. Section II tries to explain why the idea of embeddedness is intuitively suspect. One reason is found in the dominant understanding of liberalism as a regime that rests on the separation between private and public realms. The section closes with a reference to internal tensions of this reading of liberalism. Section III provides a diagnosis of the contemporary condition of disembeddedness. The core claim is that the combination of neoliberalism and globalization has created a condition of multiple—normative, social, political and legal—disintegration, which questions the very survival of democracy. Section IV addresses the question of transformation, focusing on the need for the reconceptualization of liberal equality.

Socio-Economic Profile of Shopkeepers in Embedded Markets: Social and Cultural Perspectives From a Hundred Years of Bengali Literary Works

ABSTRACTRetailing, in the context of developing economies, has been claimed to be a social practice. A review of fictional literature from the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal may enhance our understanding of the social and cultural history of independent retailing. The evidence from social sciences shows that most retail markets in the economically less developed countries function in similar ways. Such a similarity in social structures may be explained using the concept of embeddedness. This article identifies the history of socio-economic roles of rural unorganised retailers in the embedded markets of developing economies through the discourse analysis of Bengali fictional literature.

How to Reproduce Farming: A Description of the Strategies for Survival of Plum Gardens in Mountainous Rural Areas of Neyshabur County

Purpose: we investigate the strategies for survival of small orchards in present paper through considering this question that why orchards have kept their productive function despite of renovation pressure and universal market and totally not to be economical. Design/methodology/approach: grounded theory method of qualitative research, especially in this article is based on a case study should be placed on the agenda; in total, 60 semi-structured interviews and in-depth (Purposive sampling: Stratified, questionnaire) those involved in this field was Finding: The results showed domestic garden maintenance in Neyshabur when a part of strategy Employment-oriented and income from non-agricultural business backing for investment and economic mobility has become a garden. Of course, it also organized social factors in the context of traditional interactive and strong local relationships and kinship rather broad and external basis for the stability of the production process in the region; That is to say, it is also the main cause of underdevelopment. Individual motivation and personal preferences (values and beliefs) also has a fundamental role in the continuing rebel activities. Practical implications: developers don't have more than two ways in order to participations programming in future in condition of peasant's economy conquest to rural society. The first one knows internal mechanisms and satisfaction of present production way which it guaranties the minimum of village persistence. The Second one is removing the existing obstacles in destructing the traditional interactions and extending social networks among orchardists and communicating with others in production field. Originality/value: relational and territorial approaches in the concept of embeddedness, the main axis domestic garden maintenance strategies in the study does not explain in purely economic and rational action.

Meandering rides of the Swedish taxi industry

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the interplay between changes in policies, rules and regulations that have altered ethnic composition and incomes in the Swedish taxi industry since deregulation in the 1990s.Design/methodology/approachThis is a mixed-methods study, combining the qualitative interviews, scrutiny of relevant policy documents and statistical data of the Swedish population between 1992 and 2012. The analysis uses a mixed embeddedness perspective to show how the changed regulations resulted in new openings/closings in opportunities for individuals operating in the sector and how the proportion of immigrants in the sector, increased continuously between 1992 and 2012.FindingsPolicy changes have altered ethnic composition and incomes in the Swedish taxi sector. Income differences between foreign born and Swedish born are decreasing. It occurs however in the context of a general trend of lower wages within the sector. New jobs are created, but these are low paid jobs with harsh working conditions.Originality/valueWhat makes this paper original is the use of the mixed-method approach, combining the analyses of economic and ethnic changes in the sector with internal and external institutional changes in rules and regulations, which exemplify the essence of the mixed embeddedness concept. Additionally the quantitative part of the study uses register data - tax registers and population registers that includes entire population and is administered by Statistics Sweden in a database for REMESO.