Prior research on technology-intensive (TI) markets makes abstraction of the social context in which transactions take place. In contrast with this prior literature, the authors show that buyer-vendor transactions in TI markets are relationally and structurally embedded in an interfirm network....

Account managers invest in two distinct, compensatory social ties to achieve social capital, namely peripheral knowledge ties and implementation support ties. The first ties require communal investments, which consist of organizational citizenship behaviors and peripheral information sharing....

We investigate social circles in intra-firm settings. First, we argue that social circles are inhabited by individuals whose attitudes display fit with the objectives of the social circle rather than more self-centered instrumentalism or calculation. For a test of this hypothesis, we distinguish...

In an attempt at a systematic theory of entrepreneurship, this paper connects various literatures, from economics and business. In economics, there are many notions of entrepreneurship, some of which seem to contradict each other. For example, there are notions of entrepreneurship as an...

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 ties’, for a dense structure of...

Transaction cost economics faces serious problems concerning the way it deals, or fails to deal, with bounded rationality, the efficiency of outcomes, trust, innovation, learning and the nature of knowledge. The competence view yields an alternative perspective on the purpose and boundaries of...

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 paper employs the methodology of Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) to investigate under what conditions trust can be viable in markets. The emergence and breakdown of trust is modeled in a context of multiple buyers and suppliers. Agents adapt their trust in a partner, the weight...

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...

This paper connects theory of learning with theory of governance, in the context of inter-firm relations. It recognizes fundamental criticism of transaction cost economics (TCE), but preserves elements from that theory. The theory of governance used incorporates learning and trust. The paper...