In this article I develop a proposal for the theoretical vantage point of the sociology of markets, focusing on the problem of the social order of markets. The initial premise is that markets are highly demanding arenas of social interaction, which can only operate if three inevitable...

I argue that in its adaptation from Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, the concept of embeddedness has itself undergone a great transformation. In the process, significant meanings of the concept have vanished, while others have been added. First I explore the different meanings the...

This paper addresses the question of what role morally oriented behavior plays in the efficiency of market outcomes. This issue is as controversial in economics as it is in sociology. To get a better understanding of the problems and opportunities involved in morally oriented behavior in...

Following up on recent debates about sectoral systems of innovation and production, the paper introduces a heuristic framework for analyzing and explaining distinct patterns of technology-based sectoral change. The concept is based on two main interrelated influencing factors. The first is the...

The concept of trust has recently been rediscovered, especially in the fields of economic sociology and organization theory. Nevertheless, the actual functioning of trust in markets has only been understood incompletely up to now. As this paper argues, one reason for this is that...

The internationalization of postsocialist countries brought about by the activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) has produced a growing diversity of actors capable of shaping work standards in these countries. The organizational and institutionalist literature on MNCs has concentrated...

State concerns about crime and security issues have strongly affected conceptions of economic action outside the law, a traditional field of research in sociology. This increasing encroachment by policy-related concerns on the intellectual framework of the discipline has led, on one hand, to an...

In sociology generally, the infringement of legal norms is not treated as a special kind of norm violation, the sociology of law being an obvious exception. The study of illegal markets therefore faces the challenge of distinguishing illegality from legality, and relating both to legitimacy....