Networking is a much-discussed organisational practice. The authors analyse the nature and extent of networking activity within and between firms, making the criticism that present organisational theory pays insufficient attention to network relations between firms and public or quasi-public intermediary agencies. This is an especially important phenomenon in small and medium-sized firms. A critical depiction of networking at the interregional and, more especially, the intraregional levels then follows. Detailed accounts are provided of network interactions in the economically strong regions of Baden-Württemherg and Emilia-Romagna, The experiences of regions that have sought to learn from strong regions are explored, the cases of the Basque Country and Wales being highlighted. It is concluded that, although it is unreasonable to expect regional networking policies to enable reconversion regions to reproduce the accomplishments of strong regional economies, it has become normal for such regions to be engaged in a productive learning and adaptation process based on the analysis of key mechanisms of intraorganisational and interorganisational networking.
This article presents results of a research project examining the effects of social capital on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) performance. The first main part of the article is a review of literature of relevance to the study. The second part reports the main quantitative results of research on the role of social capital in SME markets in the UK. It compares SME performance and social capital usage across UK regions, with samples stratified according to degrees of knowledge intensiveness of firms and economic status of their area. It shows, perhaps surprisingly, that for many SMEs the “market” is more or less wholly constituted by social capital. The third main part of the article investigates in depth a number of representative and illustrative cases of SMEs deploying social capital in distinctive ways within markets. It shows that without social networks most firms cannot function in markets. It shows high performance firms to be the most intensive users of social capital. This research on social capital underlines the distorted nature of mainstream (neoclassical) economic theory by demonstrating “relational embeddedness” to be an important indicator of SME performance.social capital, embeddedness, firm performance, SME, regions, UK,
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.