Using sociological institutionalism the three articles constituting this dissertation scrutinize the relationship between organizations and their (social) environment at different levels of analysis and in the context of specific research questions. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in...

Covers conditions under which public-sector policies, programs, and projects succeed in enhancing the economic activities of poorer groups and micro-regions in developing countries. Topics include local economic development; small enterprises; various forms of collective action; labor and worker...

The small-scale pepper producers in the El Roble settlement Costa Rica face a monopsonistic market. Only one processing firm is buying the fresh pepper bunches. The processor has all bargaining power to decide on the price paid to the farmers and the quality selection criteria. The rejection...

Cooperative business firms are prevalent in agribusiness, yet no concise generalizedmodel exists to demonstrate how and why cooperative firms differ from, and may beselected over, the more common investor owned business firm. It is shown within ageneric transaction game that cooperatives fill...

Dramatic increases in concentration in the seed business, coupled with aggressive efforts to vertically integrate the agricultural sector and to institute contract-based production of commodities, have raised questions about the economic position of producers. Disparate positions of market power...

Theoretical reasoning disagrees about what type of bargaining system performs best. We have tested the explanatory power of three competing hypotheses: neoliberalism, coporatism and the hump-shape hypothesis. All of these hypotheses lack empirical support due to two main shortcomings. First,...

During the past two decades, community-based hazard mitigation (CBHM) has been newly proposed and implemented as an alternative conceptual model for emergency management to deal with disasters comprehensively in order to curtail skyrocketing disaster losses. Local community members have been...

"A great challenge facing CPR enthusiasts today is understanding the conditions in which CPRs can be successful. Meeting this challenge requires understanding when and why individuals choose to create and maintain CPRs. Research in this domain often focuses on the relationship between individual...

"The proposed paper synthesises our experience with different economic field experiment from four countries and action research undertaken additionally in two of the countries. The experiments discussed in this paper were carried out in rural communities of Namibia, South Africa, Cambodia and...

"The purpose of this paper is to summarize some of the bargaining issues involved in collective action to address local common-pool problems and to illustrate them in three empirical cases. The importance of riming or the sequence of coalition building and the heterogeneity of the participant's...