The role of network embeddedness across multiple social networks: Evidence from mobile social network games

This article examines peer influences from network relationships within a social network game (i.e., embeddedness) and across such games (i.e., multiplexity). Drawing on social influence theory, we develop a bivariate Poisson model of users’ repeated visits and latent attrition that accommodates peer interaction after controlling for homophily. We estimate the model using data from two social network games with considerable overlap among network members. We find that friends who are only multiplex across games exert greater peer influence on users’ game visits than members who are embedded within a single game. We also determined that ignoring network multiplexity across games may lead firms to mistarget users due to biased peer influences of embedded friends. This result provides an unresearched explanation—strength of peer influence—for the mixed findings in previous literature on network embeddedness. We utilized our results to conduct several scenario analyses to demonstrate how firms can effectively manage users’ engagement and target users in multiple social network games.     

Does job passion enhance job embeddedness? A moderated mediation model of work engagement and abusive supervision

Academic and industrial attention has been paid to the job embeddedness as an important predictor of employee actual turnover. Studies have examined the influence of job embeddedness as an antecedent, mediator, and moderator. However, there have been few investigations of antecedents of job embeddedness from the perspective of employee characteristics. Therefore, the current study bridged this research gap and investigated the associations among job passion, work engagement, abusive supervision, and job embeddedness. Data from 278 full-time hotel employees indicated that harmonious passion was not associated with job embeddedness. Moreover, obsessive passion shared a positive relationship with job embeddedness. Both harmonious and obsessive passion had an indirect effect on job embeddedness through work engagement. Abusive supervision moderated only the indirect effect of obsessive passion on job embeddedness via work engagement. A new model is proposed based on our findings to explain factors that contribute to job embeddedness.     

Do ongoing networks block out new friends? Reconciling the embeddedness constraint dilemma on new alliance partner addition

Research Summary: This study addresses a theoretical dilemma regarding how alliance network constraint (reflected by network cohesion) affects a firm’s alliance formation with new partners. Using a network pluralism approach, we separate a firm’s ego alliance network into two activity‐based networks—an exploratory network and an exploitative network—based on the primary value chain activity involved in each alliance. We argue that the cohesion of exploratory or exploitative networks has an inverted U‐shaped effect on the addition of new partners in the same activity‐based network, and a positive effect on the addition of new partners in the other network. Results based on data from the biotechnology industry largely support our predictions with one exception. Our study contributes to both scholarly understanding of network embeddedness and alliance practice. Managerial Summary: The structure of firms’ ongoing alliance networks may have paradoxical implications for their efforts to search for and form alliance with new partners. That is, when a firm’s alliance partners are tightly connected with each other, the cohesive network tends to both encourage and impede the focal firm to add new partners. We resolve this dilemma by showing that when a firm is deeply entrenched in a cohesive alliance network conducting a certain type of activities (e.g., R&D activities), it may not easily add new R&D alliance partners. However, it may still be able to escape from the cohesive R&D alliance network by seeking new partners conducting other activities (e.g., manufacturing activities).     

Managing the transfer of capabilities within multinational corporations:: the dual role of the subsidiary

In this article, the relation is explored between the external technical embeddedness of the subsidiary, its assigned role, and capability development in the MNC. It is argued that assigning roles of responsibility or mandates to certain subsidiaries can effect integration of subsidiary-developed knowledge in the MNC. Departing from literature on the market-as-networks perspective and writings from recent years on subsidiary roles, hypotheses are developed and a model outlined. The model describes a significant link between the external technical embeddedness of the subsidiary and its assigned role within the MNC, and a significant relation between the subsidiary's assigned role and its importance for other units’ capability development. The model is tested on a sample of 97 subsidiaries using the LISREL 8.3 statistical method. The final model implies that by assigning specific roles to different subsidiaries, headquarters can exploit the knowledge developed in the external environments of these subsidiaries.     

The Infusion of Relational Market Obligations into the Austrian Agenda—Some Lessons Learned from Economic Sociology

Given its dictum of market equilibrium, economics in general obviously does poorly in shouldering market dynamics. Pervading obligatory traits of the market (other than mere dyadic contracting) is yet another area where not much attention is devoted. Whereas the Austrian agenda fills the first of these voids in a most sophisticated manner, its current discourse appears as oblivious concerning the manner in which market exchange transforms into relational interconnected obligations. That is to say, exchange is hardly understood as an indispensable facet of durable market obligations such as relationships 'constituting the market', but exclusively as immediate entrepreneurial arbitrage. Apart from an outright peculiar failure to recognize some of its own roots in this regard this omission unnecessarily delimits the manner in which Austrians can proceed and deepen their market analysis. The principal idea of this paper is to scrutinize the manner in which relational market obligations can be introduced into Austrian reasoning by drawing on ideas from within economic sociology. Max Weber's dictum on market openness takes on a particular role in this regard. An adjacent contribution strived for is to let this scrutiny foreshadow the manner in which such a partial reconciliation of market ideas from within economic sociology and Austrian economics could proceed.     

集群演化与区域产业的根植性

国内产业集群主要有自发发展起来的和基于“嵌入”而发展起来的两种演化过程,集群演化是经济演化的过程,同时具备组织系统论的自组织变迁规律。实证对比国内两种产业集群的演化过程,发现自发生成的产业集群具备更多的系统演化的规律和特征。然而现实中的区域产业集群战略多是基于“嵌入”的产业发展思维,忽视了系统的演化规律。     

网络、资源与竞争优势:一个企业社会学视角下的观点

资源一直是企业获取竞争优势的主要战略因素。本文以“传统资源”为研究起点，刻画了企业行为的社会嵌入性特征，并通过引入“网络资源”这一概念揭示出一个更加全面、以企业网络及其关系资本为背景的资源分析框架，完善地拓展了传统的资源基础论观点。     

企业如何利用社会网络提升吸收能力

在知识经济的背景下,吸收能力被认为是企业提升绩效和增强创新的战略能力.社会网络被认为可以对潜在的吸收能力和实现的吸收能力都产生积极影响.本文从社会网络的关系层面,从外部和内部两个视角,分别阐述了社会网络如何影响吸收能力的两个维度.本文还从提升吸能力的视角,提出了有效构建和维护社会网络的措施.     

Market-based grazing land transfers and customary institutions in the management of rangelands: Two case studies on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Beginning in the early 1990’s, grazing lands once held in common were contracted to individual households in the rangeland regions of China. The resulting fragmentation of rangelands has led to ecological and social problems. As China seeks to address intractable poverty and rangeland degradation, attention has turned to rental, or transfer, of contracted grazing land as a market-based approach to re-aggregating grazing land into larger units that support economies of scale. However, given that many pastoral regions still maintain community customary institutions, what the relationship between market mechanisms and local customary institutions should be in rangeland management needs further analysis. This paper applies comparative case studies of two types of relationships between market mechanisms and customary institutions: (1) market mechanisms that replace customary institutions in the case of Axi village, and (2) market mechanisms that are embedded within customary institutions in Xiareer village. This allows contrast of the impacts of differing approaches on livelihoods, livestock production, and wealth differentiation among pastoral households. We found that there is a higher level of livestock mortality, lower livestock productivity, and higher livestock production cost in Axi Village compared to Xiareer Village. In addition, household asset levels are higher and there is less income differentiation in Xiareer Village. It is concluded that embedding market mechanisms within customary institutions has had notable benefits for the herders of Xiareer Village, because it is a better fit to the coupled pastoral social-ecological system. Based on these findings, we argue that in pastoral communities where the rangeland transfer system for contracted grazing land has not yet been implemented, it is critical to reconsider China’s current policy approach to pay greater attention to the innovative management systems being developed in local regions. Instead of considering market-based approaches as oppositional to traditional institutions, options that derive from the interaction of market-based and customary institutions should be considered.     

The emergence of new Islamic economic and business moralities

This article aims to explore the sources of the observed transformation in the embeddedness of economic, business, and financial practices of Muslim individuals in comparison to premodern period Muslims. It argues that the predomination of instrumental reasoning in modern times, as opposed to substantive morality in everyday practice, is one of the main reasons behind the transformation of embeddedness of Muslim individuals. Instrumental reasoning, being the dominant methodology, leads to diminished submergence in social relations; that is not limited to interpersonal relationships, but further extended to the core religious acts. How such an emergent economic and business morality is reconciled with the Islamic substantive morality is examined. It is argued that “transformation of exception into norm” is the main method used to reconcile instrumental reasoning with Islamic law in fulfilling religious obligations, at least in terms of fulfilling the form and in complying with the necessities of modern life. This has led to the emergence of new economic and business moralities.