This chapter offers a theory and method for the analysis of the dynamics, i.e. the development, of clusters for innovation. It employs an analysis of three types of embedding: institutional embedding, which is often localized, structural embedding (network structure), and relational embedding...

This article provides empirical tests of the hypothesis of ‘optimal cognitive distance’, proposed by Nooteboom (1999, 2000), in two distinct empirical settings. Variety of cognition, needed for learning, has two dimensions: the number of agents with different cognition, and...

This study examines the 'logic' or underlying causality of supply relationships. It develops and tests hypotheses, in a LISREL model, on detailed data for 553, 450 and 226 supply relationships in the US, Japanese and European automobile industries. The differences found between the three regions...

This article investigates what learning groups there are in organizations, other than the familiar 'communities of practice'. It first develops an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for identifying, categorizing and understanding learning groups. For this, it employs a constructivist,...

This article studies density and strength of ties in innovation networks. It combines issues of ‘competence’ with issues of ‘governance’. It argues that in networks for exploration there are good reasons, counter to the thesis of the ‘strength of weak...

This paper offers a meta-theory concerning the relation between the general and the specific in science. This issue was recently called back to attention by Hodgson (2001). A heuristic of discovery, developed in earlier work (Nooteboom 1992, 1996, 1999b, 2000a), is used in an attempt to...

In a synthesis of recent advances, this article gives a fresh, balanced theory of inter-organizational relations. It integrates competence and governance perspectives. It considers the choice between mergers/acquisitions and alliances. It offers a toolbox of instruments to govern relational...

This paper analyses how organizational routines change. It focuses on the level of learning groups within organizations. The paper starts with a summary of the 'activity theory' of knowledge used. Next, the notion of scripts is used, to analyse organizational groups as 'systems of distributed...

There is a tendency to see trust and control by formal agreements as substitutes. According to transaction cost economics trust is unreliable, and some form of control is needed to reduce hazards of opportunism. According to others, high trust allows for a limited extent of formal control....