Non-market Relationships Research Articles

The contribution of an outsider’s complementary assets to ecosystem emergence: Aldus Manutius and the printing industry in Renaissance Italy

Management and entrepreneurship literature have paid scant attention to the actors and activities transforming an industry into an ecosystem – that is, expanding the type of actors involved in product creation. To explore this important aspect, we investigate the role of Aldus Manutius – an influential and widely respected printer and editor in Renaissance Italy – in transforming the preindustrial printing industry into a modern ecosystem comprised not only of market actors such as printers and distributors, but also non-market ones such as humanist scholars. These non-market relationships and the activities that they facilitated constituted critical ‘complementary assets’ for the success of the Aldine printing press. We identify and classify the actors and activities that added to the business value proposition. By delivering the most comprehensive reconstruction of Manutius’ networks to date, this study illustrates the role of an outsider’s complementary assets in the transformation of an industry into an ecosystem.

Neighbors Help in a Pandemic

The degradation of non-market relationships has rendered individuals unnecessarily vulnerable in disasters, including the global pandemic. While local networks of community-based aid that emerge in response to disasters improve the efficacy of response, they tend to be short-lived. This is unfortunate, since the existence and strength of such local networks prior to the onset of disasters not only boosts the efficacy of response but also contributes to the well-being of individuals and communities in non-disaster times. Therefore, individuals ought to establish and strengthen fair-weather local networks of non-market relationships—that is, cultivate neighbor relationships.

Endogenous Growth, Population Dynamics, and Economic Structure: Long-Run Macroeconomics When Demography Matters

Even long-run macroeconomic growth models that allow for endogenous growth rely on simplistic assumptions regarding demographic regimes. This paper develops a model with more realistic variation in such regimes, including both excessively high and excessively low levels of average fertility. Variations in the structure of the market economy shape these population dynamics, and these trends in turn affect macroeconomic outcomes. Like early overlapping generations models of the type proposed by Paul A. Samuelson, our approach points to market failures and the importance of social institutions and nonmarket relationships that influence transfers between the old and the young, and the costs of childbearing. It also highlights current demographic imbalances at the country level and points to the need to develop open-economy extensions of this model that can capture the effects of population redistribution through immigration.

Social value analysis: the case of Pompeu Fabra University

Purpose This paper aims to explore how to quantify the social value generated by higher education from a social accounting perspective. The proposed approach is integrated social value (ISV) analysis, a social accounting model that considers both the economic value and the social value created by an organisation for its stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach The ISV analysis has been applied to Pompeu Fabra University, following a participatory action research process with representatives of the university and its stakeholders. Findings The final ISV includes not only the social value created through the university’s economic activity – captured by economic and financial accounting indicators – but also the specific social value created for the different stakeholders by means of non-market relationships, which were monetised through the use of indicators and financial proxies. Research limitations/implications Like other social accounting methodologies, ISV analysis suffers from some limitations regarding data availability and economic pricing, that partly will be resolved with maturation of the methodology and increasing standardisation. Practical implications By using appropriate proxies, the non-market value of the university can be monetised and integrated with university’s market value. The social value results become a valuable tool for developing useful indicators for internal management and external communication. Social implications The process of measuring the social value created by universities provides a way to meet the rising demands for greater accountability and transparency and facilitates engagement with stakeholders on how these institutions are contributing to a sustainable society. Originality/value ISV is a recently proposed social accounting model that combines an organisation’s economic and social results into a single concept of value creation and thus contributes to advance the field of social accounting.

Guest Editor's Introduction: Toward an Archaeogenealogy of Post-truth

Guest Editor's Introduction: Toward an Archaeogenealogy of Post-truth

Competitive heterogeneity, cohorts, and persistent advantage

Research summary: Juxtaposing competing theories of whether superior profits endure, this article investigates differences in the rates at which firms' profit advantages persist following a significant regulatory change in the rules governing industry competition. Such a change creates two cohorts of firms, Entrants that lack experience in the industry and Incumbents that competed in the industry before the regulatory shift. The findings show that both cohorts' profit advantages persist, but at different rates: Superior performing Incumbents sustain an advantage longer than superior performing Entrants. This result is counterintuitive since Entrants are not constrained by a legacy of competing under the prior regime. Overall, the findings indicate that stages of a firm's development and of an industry's evolution are critical to understanding how long superior profits persist.Managerial summary: State and federal institutions employ regulations in an attempt to address market failures and to create a stable set of market and nonmarket relationships among relevant actors. A byproduct of this stability is decreased competition, and in turn, reduced incentives for firms to develop efficient operations. One might expect then that deregulation would fundamentally disrupt incumbent firms' abilities to develop and sustain a profit advantage. We find the reverse: Over time, some firms in the Incumbent cohort develop persistent, albeit temporary, profit advantages despite an onslaught of Entrants. Thus, while deregulation shakes out inefficient firms, it may strengthen, rather than threaten the profit trajectories of incumbent firms over time. Advantages developed by superior performing Entrants also endure, but for a shorter duration relative to Incumbents. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Commoditization and oppression

Commoditization is a generalized Darwinian selection pressure in economic evolution driven by profit- and efficiency-seeking in the investment of key resources. By winnowing noncommodity opportunities to satisfy human needs, commoditization distorts development in ways that intensify negative social outcomes experienced by oppressed groups and undermines the possibility for sustainable development. When market logic dominates the investment of financial capital, energy, raw materials, human attention, labor, and creativity, market goods with traits associated with commodities are fully developed while nonmarket goods lacking those traits are systematically underdeveloped. Analysis of the traits of commodities explains the unsustainable development or maldevelopment that disproportionately affects those who are dependent on or who highly value important nonmarket relationships. Oppression theory is addressed with specific examples. A generalized form of oppression is theorized that systematically stunts the imagination and creativity required to meet contemporary environmental crises.

THE INFLUENCE OF CO-ORDINATION ON LABOUR MARKET ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN ECONOMIC MODEL

The goal of this paper is to comparative models of the political economy. I use Hall coordination index to conform the institutional features of liberal and coordinated market economies. In coordinated markets economies firms depend more heavily on non-market relationships to coordinate and to construct their core competencies. These non-market modes of coordination generally are based on more extensive relational or incomplete contracting, network monitoring inside networks. In liberal market economies firms coordinate their activities through hierarchies and competitive market arrangements. The political economy is a terrain populated by multiple actors: individuals, firms, producer groups or governments. However, this is a firm-centered political economy that regards companies as the crucial actors in a capitalist economy. They are the key agents of adjustment in the face of technological change or international competition whose activities aggregate into overall levels of economic performance. In both economies reveal institutional complementarities across sub-sphere of the macroeconomics. It can explain cross-national differences in the change of institution and efficiency. It conform the impact of complementarities in system of labor market regulation on rates of growth.

Costs and benefits of livestock systems and the role of market and nonmarket relationships

AbstractIn developing countries livestock are kept not only for their physical products, but also for insurance, financing, and to display status. Though this range of purposes is acknowledged, livestock policies nevertheless often emphasize physical production: a limited perspective that hampers the formulation and implementation of effective livestock policies. This article presents a comprehensive appraisal of costs and benefits of livestock systems that takes into account the institutional environment of livestock keepers. Indicators are developed that capture, quantify, and organize not only the benefits resulting from the physical production, but also those from the intangible functions. The method is illustrated by an analysis of cattle in the Western Province of Zambia. The results indicate that the perspective on livestock systems developed more closely reflects the observed decisions of the livestock keepers.

THE ADAPTABILITY OF THE FRENCH ARMAMENTS INDUSTRY IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

The transformations of the French arms industry have to be put in the context of the dramatic changes in the geopolitical and economic environment, or globalization. This paper documents the role of military-related technological programs in French technology policy, and their contribution to the technological performance of defense contractors and manufacturing industry generally. It employs the concept of a French Meso-system of Armaments (FMSA) to describe the set of committed governmental organizations and industrial companies, which are bound up with each other through market and non-market relationships. The paper traces the main transformations of the FMSA that aim at preserving, through adaptation, the intertwined relationships between the state and defense companies over the past decades and in particular in the decade following the collapse of the communist system.

FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH IN INDUSTRIAL DYNAMICS AND NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF INNOVATION1

(NSIs) constitute a fairly recent agenda in research on national specialization, innovation and economic performance. This agenda differs from other approaches in its focus on institutions and institutional learning. The fundamental insights of the agenda signify that economic success in industrial innovation depends on long-term relationships and close interaction with external agents, involve non-market relationships and may to a large extent be "national". The national bearing is based both on the prevailing economic structure and on the institutional set-up. Industrial dynamics and NSIs involve analysing innovation systems at different levels of aggregations ranging from the firm over inter-firm relationships to the wider structural, technological and institutional environment.

Institutional relationships and technology commercialization: Limitations of market based policy

U.S. technology commercialization policies have focused on efforts to correct “market failures”. Policy subsidizing innovation and antitrust policy both seek to increase market efficiency and thus attain welfare gains. One problem is that these policies make conflicting assumptions about individual economic behavior. This leads to inconsistent policy. A second problem is that non-market relationships, such as those embodied in industry standard-setting bodies, professional and trade associations, and inter-institutional cooperation also influence the process of technology commercialization. A comparison of U.S. and Japanese institutional responses to the commercial potential of high definition television suggests that (1) the market approach to this technology has led to conflicting policy prescriptions in the U.S., and (2) Japanese policymakers have been more effective than their American counterparts in facilitating non-market relationships. Implications for U.S. policy are discussed.

Corporate strategies for political action

Discussions of the firm's relationships with its environment have usually concluded that the firm should make adaptive decisions to non-market areas, and proactive or strategic decisions in market areas. Predicating strategic responses upon the differences between market and non-market relationships is inappropriate and misleading, reduces the capacity of the firm to respond effectively to its environment, and distorts the process of environmental scanning. When the firm's relationships with its environment are examined as inter-organizational relationships, market and non-market relationships are structurally similar, and the same types of strategic responses can be selected for both areas. The strategic responses available to the firm in inter-organizational terms are: adaptation; pre-emption, co-optation; interpenetration; conflict and withdrawal. These processes and choices are structurally similar to traditional market related strategic options and can be used to respond to market and non-market factors. The manager scans the environment not only to identify opportunities for adaptation, but to identify groups which affect the integrity of the firm, the processes for interaction, the character of relationships, and occasions for strategic choice. The strategic decision process under a framework of inter-organizational transactions is illustrated by the cases of Sun Life Insurance Co., and the pulp and paper industry in Quebec.

A THEORY OF DOWNWARD-RIGID WAGES AND CYCLICAL UNEMPLOYMENT

The theory presented below provides a rationale for downward wage rigidity and consequent cyclical unemployment by modifying the neoclassical assumption of behavioral independence. Such a modification permits an examination of important nonmarket relationships holding between the individual's wage and the wages paid to other people and between perceived equity in wages received and worker productivity—both linkages widely recognized by personnel managers but little explored by economists. The resulting model predicts a pattern of behavior that is consistent with the available evidence on the actual operation of labor markets.