1,721,006 research outputs found
Why We Could Need a Relational Economics and Why Standard Economics and Its (Orthodox) Derivations Do not Help
No full textThe theoretical landscape of economic, management, and social sciences is already rather crowded to advance with light heart a further proposal. Therefore, this chapter aims only to offer elements to reason about the opportunity to create the new research field of Relational Economics. I suggest three main lines of reasoning that can help for this purpose. Firstly, I attempt to show that standard economics and its (orthodox) derivations do not provide the right theoretical background. Secondly, I argue that complexity science should be the methodological and epistemological framework on which developing Relational Economics. Finally, I outline five research streams - behavioral and evolutionary economics, analytical and relational sociology, and organization science – that could be the building blocks of the new approach. They are largely consistent and partially overlapped each another, and thus, beyond the relatively different languages, it is not difficult to imagine its convergence to a unitary proposal
Are worker cooperatives green? some reflections in terms of governance
No full textIn 2015 the United Nations (UN) proposed its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda specified seventeen interlinked Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. They balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social, and environmental.
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the relationship between the presence of worker cooperatives and the diffusion of environmental awareness. The starting point is that worker cooperatives, by providing institutions in which employees control most aspects of their job and firm strategy, internalise the SDGs more than the traditional firms. In particular, in worker cooperatives, productive choices are made by workers that generally are part of the community where is located the firm. In this perspective they provide sustainable and local employment starting by their governance model and are likely to have a number of positive effects on their communities’ economies and health. Furthermore, the intergenerational nature of cooperatives is a stronger guarantee of sustainable development if compared with traditional capitalistic firms not only in environmental terms, but also by a social and economic point of view
Network Analysis for Economics and Management Studies
No full textSociology and other social sciences have employed network analysis earlier than management and
organization sciences, and much earlier than economics, which has been the last one to systematically
adopt it. Nevertheless, the development of network economics during last 15 years has been massive,
alongside three main research streams: strategic formation network modeling, (mostly descriptive)
analysis of real economic networks, and optimization methods of economic networks. The main reason
why this enthusiastic and rapidly diffused interest of economists came so late is that the most essential
network properties, like externalities, endogenous change processes, and nonlinear propagation
processes, definitely prevent the possibility to build a general – and indeed even partial – competitive
equilibrium theory. For this paradigm has dominated economics in the last century, this incompatibility
operated as a hard brake, and presented network analysis as an inappropriate epistemology. Further,
being intrinsically (and often, until recent times, also radically) structuralist, social network analysis
was also antithetic to radical methodological individualism, which was – and still is – economics dominant
methodology. Though culturally and scientifically influenced by economists in some fields, like
finance, banking and industry studies, scholars in management and organization sciences were free
from “neoclassical economics chains”, and therefore more ready and open to adopt the methodology
and epistemology of social network analysis. The main and early field through which its methods were
channeled was the sociology of organizations, and in particular group structure and communication,
because this is a research area largely overlapped between sociology and management studies. Currently,
network analysis is becoming more and more diffused within management and organization sciences.
Mostly descriptive until 15 years ago, all the fields of social network analysis have a great opportunity
of enriching and developing its methods of investigation through statistical network modeling, which
offers the possibility to develop, respectively, network formation and network dynamics models. They are
a good compromise between the much more powerful agent-based simulation models and the usually
descriptive (or poorly analytical) methods
NK Simulation Modeling
No full textLaunched and developed primarily by Kauffman from the end of sixties, NK simulation modelling candidates
for capturing networks dynamics. Grounded in reference to biological networks, it has aroused
a grate and durable interest in economics and management sciences too. This methodology is split into
a version focused on studying proper Boolean networks dynamics, whose trajectories are substantially
conditioned by Boolean functions, and a (much more frequented) version focused on systems co-evolutionary
paths driven by the search for optimizing its fitness value. Besides the unquestionable value
of Kauffman’s work for the theoretical implications on evolutionary biology and the strong interest for
economics and management sciences, in this chapter failures and limitations of both NK modelling versions
are discussed. In particular, it is shown that as applications try to be more realistic, this modeling
becomes hardly treatable from a computational point of view. On the other hand, it is underlined that,
especially the fitness landscape version, NK simulation modelling is very useful to show general aspects
of system’s dynamics, and the impossibility to find general optima (excepted for very special and unrealistic
cases). This result sounds a sharp criticism to general economic equilibrium, and it is perfectly
consistent with Simon’s contributions
D Collaboration Networks in the European Aerospace Sector
No full textDo trading countries also collaborate in R&D? This is the question that, facing with a number of methodological
problems, here it is dealt with. Studying and comparing the international trade network and the
R&D collaboration network of European countries in the aerospace sector, social network analysis offers
a wide spectrum of methods and criteria either to make them comparable or to evaluate its similarity.
International trade is a 1-mode directed and valued network, while the EU-subsidized R&D collaboration
is an affiliation (2-mode) undirected and unvalued network, and the elementary units of this latter
are organizations and not countries. Therefore, to the aim to make these two networks comparable, this
paper shows and discusses a number of methodological problems and solutions offered to solve them,
and provides a multi-faceted comparison in terms of various statistical and topological indicators. A
comparative analysis of the two networks structures is made at aggregate and disaggregate level, and
it is shown that the common centralization index is definitively inappropriate and misleading when applied
to multi-centered networks like these, and especially to the R&D collaboration network. The final
conclusion is that the two networks resemble in some important aspects, but differ in some minor traits.
In particular, they are both shaped in a core-periphery structure, and in both cases important countries
tend to exchange or collaborate more with marginal countries than between themselves
A Methodology to Measure the Hierarchical Degree of Formal Organizations
No full textHierarchy is a fundamental phenomenon in management and organization science, a phenomenon which
has marked the evolution of human societies over centuries. Among the many studies on this issue, the
ones that adopt a formal approach of investigation are mainly based on social network analysis. Following
this line, in this work we focus on organization distribution of formal direct authority in stylized, pure
hierarchical archetypes. Past research, analyzing the share of asymmetric links in out-tree topologies,
was not able to distinguish among different types of out-trees. Indeed since the out-trees can differ under
substantial structural features, in order to measure the degree of hierarchy it is necessary to employ
indicators of power concentration and distribution. Results show that the purest archetype of hierarchy
is the star form, and not the typical org chart. Further, ceteris paribus, an organization with more
hierarchical levels is less and not more hierarchical than an organization with fewer levels. Moreover,
power tend to concentrate in lower levels, and especially into the penultimate one
On the Relationships between Connection Modes and Workgroup Performance
No full textNotwithstanding the central place covered inside organization science and the economic theory of the
firm, organization design theory still lacks sound building blocks concerning the effects that some fundamental
variables have on workgroup performance. In this chapter a contribution to fill in this gap
is given with reference to the relationships between connection modes and performance. In particular,
through an agent-based simulation model a number of experiments have been done respect to the moderating
role played by group size and task complexity. Results confirm current (but not really scientific)
knowledge, and bring forth our understanding of these fundamental (and mostly nonlinear) relationships.
Among the main results, it can be underlined that the best combinations between connection modes,
task complexity, and workgroup size occur when complex tasks are connected by mutual adaptation and
run by a small number of agents, or when less complex tasks are connected by parallel or sequential
interdependence and performed by a large number of agents. Moreover, when a modules volume to be
worked out is heterogeneous in terms of connection modes between module’s tasks, and thus, a multimode
group should be issued, respect to the corresponding choice of issuing specialized groups there
is a general decrease in efficacy
An International Trade Comparison of Two Supposedly Different Sectors
No full textAccording to modern international economics, and especially evolutionary economic geography, a
country industry characteristics influence the structure of its international trade. Following this view,
this chapter moves from the following basic research issue: if two sectors are very different according
to market, economic and technological aspects, should we expect that its corresponding international
trade networks are as well markedly different? Aerospace and Common Earth Materials seem quite different
in those respects, and thus, they are good candidates to explore that research issue. Its comparison
allowed to evidence and discuss some methodological problems in applying social network analysis,
and especially in using it to compare different networks. In particular, it is underlined the difficulty to
handle valued networks when value variance is very high, and to combine three groups of indicators:
simple, hierarchy focused, and strictly topological. The comparative analysis employed 32 indicators
either at network or sub-network level, like for core-periphery analysis, which indicate clear and marked
diversity only in terms of hierarchical degree and topological aspects. A first conclusion is that the two
examined trade networks are following a similar path and, excepted for few indicators, they seem to
be rather similar even at a deeper structural level. Hence, one (or more) of three implications can be
drawn: 1) the global value networks corresponding to the two sectors are not so markedly different; 2)
they are substantially different but such a diversity does not produce a significant difference in terms
of international trade networks; 3) there are some methodological problems that prevent differences
to be evidence and require a more refined and modified comparison. A second conclusion is that trade
patterns of both sectors are rather unstable
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