Micro-macro Link Research Articles

Corporate Political Ties and Firm Performance in a Transition Economy: A Replication and Extension of Peng and Luo (2000)

ABSTRACTHow do corporate political ties impact firm performance in a transition economy? This topic has attracted wide attention in the strategy field. Accordingly, our study replicates a highly influential study, ‘Managerial ties and firm performance in a transition economy: The nature of a micro-macro link’ (Peng & Luo, 2000). The original study found that managerial political ties greatly improve organizational performance, and that this ‘micro-macro’ link varies across ownership types, business sectors, firm sizes, and industry growth rates. This replication study offers a hierarchical view of political ties by extending it from the individual to the organizational level and explores the complex link between the two levels of corporate political ties and firm performance. The results of a staged quasi-replication exercise show some similarities with the original study in the mechanism of corporate political ties on firm performance but, more importantly, reveal some key differences in the effect size and contingent effects. Furthermore, an extended test shows that corporate political ties are multilevel, and different levels of political ties vary in their mechanisms and effects on firm performance. The findings reveal temporal and contextual sensitivities of political ties studies in transition economies.

How do entrepreneurs' cross-cultural experiences contribute to entrepreneurial ecosystem performance?

While research on the cross-cultural experience of entrepreneurs has demonstrated that exposure to diverse cultures is beneficial for new venture growth, it has neglected the performance implications of entrepreneurs’ cross-cultural experience at the ecosystem level. This study endeavors to explore the micro-macro link between cross-cultural entrepreneurs and the performance of entrepreneurial ecosystems in which they are embedded. Building on the dynamic capability perspective, we argue that entrepreneurial ecosystem orchestrators can leverage entrepreneurs’ cross-cultural experiences to develop ecosystem dynamic capabilities and consequently improve entrepreneurial ecosystem performance. Based on multi-wave survey data of 2,981 business incubators in China, our findings show that cross-cultural entrepreneurs are positively associated with entrepreneurial ecosystem performance via increased ecosystem innovation. Moreover, the integrative capability of ecosystem orchestrators moderates the relationship between cross-cultural entrepreneurs and ecosystem innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on cross-cultural experience by extending it to the ecosystem level and inject fresh insights into the dynamic capability literature by uncovering the formation process of ecosystem dynamic capabilities.

Experimental verification of 2D Cosserat chirality with stretch-micro-rotation coupling in orthotropic metamaterials with granular motif

Chiral effects in 2D Cosserat continuum model may arise from coupling between stretching deformations and the micro-rotation for hemitropic materials. An orthotropic 2D chiral Cosserat continuum is introduced to account for this type of coupling. The expected chiral effects are verified through an experimental effort using a specimen with granular motif. A granular micro-mechano-morphology is considered that leads to 2D orthotropic macroscopic response. The resultant metamaterial is designed by the aid of micro-macro links provided by the granular micromechanics model, where the relationship between micro-rotation is exploited as well as the coupling of shear and normal responses of grain-pair interactions. A square specimen is fabricated by 3D printing and subjected to unidirectional compression. The specimen deformation field is characterized using digital image correlation (DIC) via mesoscale analyses. The predicted displacements and micro-rotations are found to closely follow their measured counterparts. Moreover, the measured reaction-displacement response agrees well with that predicted by the continuum model. The results demonstrate that it is possible to rationally design micro-mechano-morphologies that yield desired emergent behavior at the macroscale.© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Parametric Experimentation to Evaluate Chiral Bars Representative of Granular Motif

The recent wide-ranging interest in chiral materials motivates the need to understand the mechanisms that underlie mechanical chirality. This paper investigates the emergent chiral mechanical behavior of bars in relationship to microscale deformation mechanisms. The focus is upon (meta)material systems with granular motif that exploit couplings between stretch, shear and rotation such that the designed bar exhibits non-standard transverse motion under extension. To this end, a 1D-micropolar model is derived using the granular micromechanics paradigm to predict macroscale chirality based upon grain-scale interactions. The model provides micro-macro links necessary for designing the physical (meta)material system conceived as a granular bar. The validity of the derived model is then investigated through parametric experimentation using the designed system fabricated through 3D printing. The granular bar is varied with regard to two geometrical parameters that describe the interaction between two adjacent grains, thereby providing parametric spaces with respect to the considered geometrical parameters. Tensile experiments on the granular bar are analyzed using digital image correlation (DIC) to extract multiscalar deformation fields. The DIC results serve as the basis for investigating the unusual motions predicted by the 1D model by comparing the predicted displacement and rotation fields with those obtained experimentally.

The evolution of micro-macro link in service dominant logic from service ecosystem perspective:

The evolution of micro-macro link in service dominant logic from service ecosystem perspective:

Dynamic Managerial Cognitive Capabilities: Exploring the Micro Foundation of a Firm's Innovation

Despite research begin to investigate the micro-macro link between a very important yet under-investigated capabilities—a firm’s dynamic managerial cognitive capabilities—and its macro-level outcomes, they focus on particular types of cognitive capabilities, offering a partial picture for the working mechanisms of dynamic managerial cognitive capabilities. In this study, we systematically investigate how a firm’s dynamic managerial cognitive capabilities are decomposed into different subdimensions respectively and functioning as a whole in affecting an entrepreneurial firm’s innovation. By conducting three studies including simulation, content analysis, survey, and second-hand data, the consistent results show that cognitive-related sensing capability negatively, while cognitive-related seizing and reconfiguring capabilities positively affect an entrepreneurial firm’s innovation performance. Our findings provide a more complete and fine-grained view of the effects of micro-level dynamic managerial cognitive capabilities on a firm’s macro-level innovation.

Sustainable Livelihoods Approach: Alternative to Rural Development

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of sustainable livelihoods as a strategy for rural development. This paper explores how, under different contexts, sustainable livelihoods approach is useful on behalf of different livelihood strategies. This paper is basically based on secondary sources and interpretation is made as a content analysis method. People centered, holistic, dynamic, sustainable, micro-macro links etc. are the key principles of sustainable livelihoods approach. Policy makers are always concerned with the approaches to rural development in emerging country. This research also provides applied knowledge to fulfill the policy gap with reference to rural development. Further, it provides the guidelines to the decision makers, planners and academia, especially for the developing countries to understand the important lessons regarding rural development intervention.

From Individual Traits to Couple Behavior

Micro-macro links between individual psychophysical traits and couple behavior are established. The analysis is carried out through a simple idealized model that mimics couples not influenced by their social environment. The functions describing the traits, i.e. the reactions to the love and appeal of the partner, are quite general. In particular, they allow one to take into account relatively sophisticated characteristics like insecurity and bias. The results are interesting even if some of them have already been discovered in extremely special cases. Some features of the idealized model are also used to theoretically support important behaviors identified empirically by psychotherapists.

The Conceptualization of Everyday Racism in Research on the Mental and Physical Health of Ethnic and Racial Groups: a Systematic Review.

Research on the influence of everyday racism and discrimination on the mental and physical health of ethnic and racial groups is on the rise. Scholars use self-reported experiences of racism and discrimination scales to study the relationship between everyday racism/discrimination and health. Throughout the years, these scales have been tested for psychometric measures, validity, and reliability of the items. However, less attention is paid to how the concept of everyday racism and discrimination is defined in the first place. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic review perusing 106 papers is conducted of studies investigating the relationship of everyday racism/discrimination and the physical and mental health of ethnic and/or racial groups. This review allows to synthesize how everyday racism is conceptualized, interpreted, and operationalized. A meta-analysis was not possible due to the heterogeneity in research designs, methodologies, and populations. Following the original conceptualization of everyday racism, results indicate that research pays attention to the repeatability of everyday racism. However, racism was only defined in 7% of the papers and in different ways varying from individual to institutional racism. In 86% of the papers did they measure everyday racism/discrimination through the Everyday Discrimination Scale. This influenced the way in which everyday discrimination was defined taking on a more individual perspective paying less attention to the micro-macro link of everyday racism.

On the Ontological Turn in Economics: The Promises of Agent-Based Computational Economics

This article argues that agent-based modeling (ABM) is the methodological implication of Lawson’s championed ontological turn in economics. We single out three major properties of agent-based computational economics (ACE), namely, autonomous agents, social interactions, and the micro-macro links, which have been well accepted by the ACE community. We then argue that ACE does make a full commitment to the ontology of economics as proposed by Lawson, based on his prompted critical realism. Nevertheless, the article also points out the current limitations or constraints of ACE. Efforts to overcome them are deemed to be crucial before ACE can make itself more promising to the current ontological turn in economics.

Movement-mediated community assembly and coexistence.

Organismal movement is ubiquitous and facilitates important ecological mechanisms that drive community and metacommunity composition and hence biodiversity. In most existing ecological theories and models in biodiversity research, movement is represented simplistically, ignoring the behavioural basis of movement and consequently the variation in behaviour at species and individual levels. However, as human endeavours modify climate and land use, the behavioural processes of organisms in response to these changes, including movement, become critical to understanding the resulting biodiversity loss. Here, we draw together research from different subdisciplines in ecology to understand the impact of individual-level movement processes on community-level patterns in species composition and coexistence. We join the movement ecology framework with the key concepts from metacommunity theory, community assembly and modern coexistence theory using the idea of micro-macro links, where various aspects of emergent movement behaviour scale up to local and regional patterns in species mobility and mobile-link-generated patterns in abiotic and biotic environmental conditions. These in turn influence both individual movement and, at ecological timescales, mechanisms such as dispersal limitation, environmental filtering, and niche partitioning. We conclude by highlighting challenges to and promising future avenues for data generation, data analysis and complementary modelling approaches and provide a brief outlook on how a new behaviour-based view on movement becomes important in understanding the responses of communities under ongoing environmental change.

The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks

An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical micro-level network processes contribute to their emergence. We argue that traditional social network theories that are concerned with the evolution of positive relations (forces of attraction) are not sufficient to explain the emergence of groups because they lack mechanisms explaining the emergence of group boundaries. Models that additionally account for the evolution of negative ties (forces of repulsion) may be better suited to explain the emergence and stability of groups. We build a theoretical model and illustrate its usefulness by fitting stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to empirical data of co-evolving networks of friendship and dislike among 479 secondary-school students. The SAOMs include a number of newly developed effects expressing the co-evolution between positive and negative ties. We then simulate networks from the estimated models to explore the micro-macro link. We find that a model that considers forces of attraction and repulsion simultaneously is better at explaining groups in social networks. In the long run, however, the empirically informed simulations generate networks that are too stylized to be realistic, raising further questions about model degeneracy and time heterogeneity of group processes.

Reply to Thesis Eleven symposium

Collins comments on status groups, micro-macro links, failures of peace dialogue, violence and confrontational tension/fear, educational credential inflation, creativity in intellectual networks, time-dynamics of nationalism and populism.

TMT social capital, network position and innovation: the nature of micro-macro links

Employing a sample of 1476 firms and 5130 firm-years in China, we examine the relationship between social capital and macro organizational innovation. Based on the relational view and social capital theory, this study investigates how the top management team (TMT) inside an organization bridges and bonds social capital to influence innovations combined with organizational network position. Through empirical tests based on listed companies in the whole network of the interlocking directorate using the dataset of listed companies in China from 2008 to 2014, the study finds that: (1) TMT global social capital has an essential positive effect on innovation, (2) TMT overseas social capital has significant positive consequences on prestige and power (network position), (3) network position mediates the relationship between TMT overseas social capital and innovation, and (4) TMT bank social capital has a moderating effect on the relationship between network position and innovation.

Coleman’s Boat Revisited: Causal Sequences and the Micro-macro Link

This article argues that empirical social scientists can be freed from having to account for “micro-to-macro transitions.” The article shows, in opposition to the (still) dominant perspective based on Coleman’s macro-micro-macro model, that no micro-macro transitions or mechanisms connect the individual level to the macro level in empirical social science. Rather, when considering that social macro entities and properties are micro manifest rather than macro manifest, it becomes clear that the micro-macro move in empirical social science is purely conceptual or analytical.

Rhythmus als fundamentale soziale Orientierung

AbstractHow do actors co-ordinate their actions in a well-tested stage play? And how does a dance-theatre performance contribute to a better understanding of processes of social coordination? The way participants co-ordinate social interactions is guided by mechanisms that are true for the actors involved in the scene. Viewed as a burning glass, the dance-theatre scene is analysed in a cumulative theoretical process, as actors in this scripted coordination are oriented towards i) implicit rules in social contexts, ii) non-linear system attributes, iii) anticipations of events, iv) mutual monitoring and v) rhythmic gestalts. Rhythmic pattern analysis shows when and with what tempo and intensity participants adapt to each other’s multi-modal impulses, establishing (prelude), narrowing (climax) and dissolving (conclusion) a rhythmic co-construction. Micro-macro links between transitions of rhythmic gestalts (co-regulation) and the speakers’ contributions (individual autonomy) reveal rhythm as a fundamental social orientation.

Information Exchange Design Patterns for Robot Swarm Foraging and Their Application in Robot Control Algorithms.

In swarm robotics, a design pattern provides high-level guidelines for the implementation of a particular robot behaviour and describes its impact on swarm performance. In this paper, we explore information exchange design patterns for robot swarm foraging. First, a method for the specification of design patterns for robot swarms is proposed that builds on previous work in this field and emphasises modular behaviour design, as well as information-centric micro-macro link analysis. Next, design pattern application rules that can facilitate the pattern usage in robot control algorithms are given. A catalogue of six design patterns is then presented. The patterns are derived from an extensive list of experiments reported in the swarm robotics literature, demonstrating the capability of the proposed method to identify distinguishing features of robot behaviour and their impact on swarm performance in a wide range of swarm implementations and experimental scenarios. Each pattern features a detailed description of robot behaviour and its associated parameters, facilitated by the usage of a multi-agent modeling language, BDRML, and an account of feedback loops and forces that affect the pattern’s applicability. Scenarios in which the pattern has been used are described. The consequences of each design pattern on overall swarm performance are characterised within the Information-Cost-Reward framework, that makes it possible to formally relate the way in which robots acquire, share and utilise information. Finally, the patterns are validated by demonstrating how they improved the performance of foraging e-puck swarms and how they could guide algorithm design in other scenarios.

The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks

An important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical micro-level network processes contribute to their emergence. We argue that traditional social network theories that are concerned with the evolution of positive relations (forces of attraction) are not sufficient to explain the emergence of groups because they lack mechanisms explaining the emergence of group boundaries. Models that additionally account for the evolution of negative ties (forces of repulsion) may be better to explain the emergence and stability of groups in social networks. We build a theoretical model and illustrate it by fitting stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to empirical data of co-evolving networks of friendship and dislike among 479 secondary-school students. The SAOMs include a number of newly developed effects expressing the co-evolution between positive and negative ties. We then simulate artificial networks from the estimated models to explore the micro-macro link. We find that a model that considers forces of attraction and repulsion simultaneously is better at explaining groups in social networks. In the long run, however, the empirically informed simulations generate networks that are too stylized to be realistic, raising further questions about model degeneracy and time heterogeneity of group processes.

Partnering Cross Networks and Firm Innovation: When Do Founding Members (In)Activate Their Ties?

Prior research assumed managers are naturally motivated to use their personal ties for the benefits of their firms but overlooked the mechanism and contingency from “having a tie” to “using the tie”. This study challenged the underlying assumption and tried to complete to the micro-macro links research by identify under what conditions managers are motivated to activate or withdraw their ties. Using the data of Tsinghua Alumni Entrepreneurship survey, the results showed when founding team members have diverse and non-redundant social ties, it will contribute to innovation performance of the new ventures, but not very strongly and significantly. Good IPR protection system will motivate individuals to activate personal ties and enhance above relations, but inner logic conflicts, i.e. partnering with relational ties and transactional ties in a team, would weaken such relation.

Sustainable livelihood approach towards enhanced management of rural resources

This research utilises the sustainable livelihood approach to evaluate the livelihood assets and resources and identify key challenges and development opportunities in a village in Southern Lebanon. Primary data using quantitative (structured questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structured interview) methods were collected. The findings highlight the weak resource management and monitoring of various aspects. The factors influencing the village's livelihoods include constraints in water quantity and water quality monitoring, communication and micro-macro links, as well as the allocation of financial resources. The utilisation of the sustainable livelihood approach resulted in developing a practical action plan and a set of management strategies for the enhancement of the village's livelihood based on detailed local knowledge and community input. The significance of this research lies in defining and prioritising factors influencing rural livelihoods and typical relationships among them in real life situations. It focuses on quantitative and qualitative variables and provides evidence-based interventions.