Edward Elgar Publishing Networks (Critical Studies in Economic Institutions series)

This major two-volume collection presents a comprehensive overview of the scholarly literature exploring the emergence, functioning and forms of networks, focusing on their role in the economy. The collection draws from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds to combine key writings that have defined the field with more recent contributions in emerging areas of network research. Volume I introduces networks as a distinctive governance structure. The collection explores critical antecedents and social exchange conditions of networks such as trust, reputation, power, and cohesion and also examines the vulnerability of networks. Volume II features pivotal network processes and dynamics such as access, learning and innovation, mobilization and recombination, and diffusion. The collection covers the spectrum of various network forms and elucidates the key features of regional, informal, business and project networks. These insightful volumes will be an essential source of reference for students and researchers alike. Review 'Overall, this two-volume collection is a useful and authoritative resource for scholars who are concerned with the institutional organization of socioeconomic life in economic geography and related fields, providing a one-stop shop of major contributions that have spawned and developed this diverse and complex field of research.' -- Al James, Economic Geography'A masterful selection of fundamental academic works on inter-organizational networks, showing how the understanding of these "hybridized" forms of organization has been especially successful in "hybridized" social sciences such as economic sociology, economic geography, organizational sociology, and organizational economics, and providing a precious overview of the most significant branches of network research at an inter-organizational level.' -- Anna Grandori, University Luigi Bocconi, Italy About the Author Edited by Gernot Grabher, HafenCity University, Germany and Walter W. Powell, Professor of Education, Organizational Behavior and Sociology, Stanford University, US