Conventions and Structures in Economic Organization: Markets, Networks and Hierarchies(New Horizons in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics series)

For individual actors involved in economic activities (i.e. production, exchanges), conventions and structures represent two different types of opportunity or constraint. Conventions refer to values, rules and representations that influence economic behaviour. Structures refer to patterns of resource interdependencies existing among members of any social system. This book contributes to the current rapprochement between economics and sociology. It examines the fact that individuals use rules and interdependencies to forward their own interests, while living in social environments where everyone does the same. The authors argue that to construct durable organizations and viable markets, they need to be able to handle both. However, thus far, economists and sociologists have not been able to reconcile the relationship between these two types of constraints on economic activity. Conventions and Structures in Economic Organization seeks to bridge this gap and will appeal to students and scholars in both economics and sociology, offering them new ideas about how they can co-operate in unsuspected ways and combine their interdisciplinary efforts.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Introduction Emmanuel Lazega and Olivier Favereau 1. No Man is an Island: The Research Program of a Social Capital Theory Henk Flap 2. Conventionalist Approaches to Enterprise François Eymard-Duvernay 3. Institutional Embeddedness of Economic Exchange: Convergence Between New Institutional Economics and the Economics of Conventions Christian Bessy 4. Transaction Cost Economics and Governance Structures: Applications, Developments and Perspectives Didier Chabaud and Stéphane Saussier 5. Organizational Ecology David N. Barron 6. Interdependent Entrepreneurs and the Social Discipline of their Cooperation: A Research Programme for Structural Economic Sociology in a Society of Organizations Emmanuel Lazega and Lise Mounier 7. Employer/Employee Relationship Regulation and the Lessons of School/Work Transition in France Alain Degenne 8. Where Do Markets Come From? From (Quality) Conventions! Olivier Favereau, Olivier Biencourt and François Eymard-Duvernay 9. Market Profiles: A Tool Suited to Quality Orders? An Empirical Analysis of Road Haulage and the Theatre Olivier Biencourt and Daniel Urrutiaguer 10. Solidarity, its Microfoundations and Macrodependence. A Framing Approach Siegwart Lindenberg Conclusion: Quality is a System Property. Downstream Harrison C. White Index

About the Author :
Edited by Olivier Favereau, Professor of Economics, University of Paris, Nanterre and Emmanuel Lazega, Department of Sociology, Sciences Po, CSO-CNRS, IUF, France

Review :
'One of the most exciting developments in recent European economic thought is the emergence of the approach known as 'the economics of convention'. No better introduction to this school of thought, with its interesting mixture of economics and sociology, could be had than this anthology, which is edited by economist Olivier Favereau and sociologist Emmanuel Lazega.'