Working Paper Series, Department of Industrial Economics & Strategy, Copenhagen Business School
No 98-11:
Mutual Adaptation and Technological Innovation
Henrik Sornn-Friese
Abstract: In evolutionary economics the firm is the sole locus of
economic and technological change, and only little is said about the
analytical importance of economic relationships. An emerging theme in the
fields of economic sociology, however, is the idea that economic activities
are embedded in social context. This paper unpacks the notion of
embeddedness as a relational concept linking micro-behavior and
macro-outcome and relates this to the ongoing discussions on technological
innovation and the evolutionary dynamics of firms and industries. It
discusses how firms to different degrees are embedded in economic
relationships, and how this influences innovative activity (or economic
activities more generally) though processes of mutual adaptation. Empirical
examples of differently embedded firms in the Danish road haulage sector is
put forth, and it is argued that the degree and type of embeddedness
matters for innovative activity.
Keywords: embeddedness; technological innovation; evolutionary economics; economic relationships; learning; knowledge; the Danish road haulage sector; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: B4; L2; L8; O3; (follow links to similar papers)
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