markets and firm behavior
In this paper I want to develop a critique of certain approaches to markets and firm behavior in economics and economic sociology. There are two main targets of the critique. The first concerns some common approaches to markets and the nature of firms in relation to them. Here the diverse range of uses of the term 'market' in contemporary lay and academic discourse are argued to cause confusion. Also problematic in both mainstream and institutional economics is the tendency to treat market exchange as the atomic structure of all economic processes, and as the default form of economic coordination, so that any other forms of organization are either marginalised or treated as problematic exceptions. The second target of critique concerns literature on the socially embedded character of economic processes, on the nature of networks, and the role of trust. While largely endorsing the importance attached to these in recent literature, I argue that their treatment has suffered frequ!ently from being idealist, both in the sense of underestimating material aspects of economic life and in presenting an overly benign view which underestimates the instrumentality of economic relations. In the third section, I venture some obse
The fact that production is not generally carried out by individual producers, but by producers acting in concert therefore becomes an awkward one. Networks too, allow for exit, and need be underpinned by! no assumptions of loyalty beyond what self-interest requires. The problems come when authors apply them outside these contexts, particularly where explanatory weight is transferred unknowingly from one referent of 'market' to another. rentiers - as a way of encouraging entrepreneurship: whereas entrepreneurs are celebrated precisely for producing something which didn't already exist, rentiers can earn an income without producing anything. Long-term, high-trust relationships tend to be associated not merely with certain cultural traditions such as forms of kinship relations (pace Granovetter, 1998, for example), but are backed up with institutional, legal and financial circumstances which influence the time-scale over which rates of profit matter and the degree to which firms are exposed to short-term pressures, and the scope for voice relative to exit. While markets do indeed provide incentives and sanctions which encourage competitive behaviour, whether the latter occurs depends on other features, such as technological possibilities, spatial monopolies and organizational learning and strategy, which take us into the spheres of production and use/consumption. Chytry (eds) Technology, Organization and Competitiveness, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 193-214 · Whitaker, D. As a worker employed in marketing, perhaps responsible for managing the account of just one major industrial customer, or on the other side as a buyer for that company, the market is something far more restricted; it is also more obviously socially embedded, since negotiating and reproducing that embedding is part of my job. Real markets are just one form in which those opportunity costs sometimes get reflected. " This is an extraordinary usage for it means almost the opposite of what it says: namely that such a market hardly exists and can only be imagined. In the market optic of mainstream economics, the whole economy becomes 'the market' in the singular, or 'market system'. Many abstract discussions of 'the market' slide between restricted and inclusive versions (Hodgson, 1999, p. ) Technology, Organization and Competitiveness, Oxford, Oxford University Press · Habermas, J (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 'Derived demand' and lock-in mean that real product markets are interdependent and nested not only at the level of competing for exchange-value, but through use-value and institutional constraints.
Common topics in this essay:
Maurice Dobb,
Marx Engels,
Annette Baier,
Durkheim Marx,
Arrow Debreu,
Japan Europe,
Marx Simmel,
Margaret Thatcher,
Inclusiveness Concepts,
Rhenish Japanese,
'the market',
market optic,
press ·,
university press,
opportunity costs,
economic relations,
real markets,
university press ·,
social relations,
economic behaviour,
cambridge polity ·,
production consumption,
london routledge ·,
cambridge university press,
cambridge cambridge university,
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Acceptance Essays
