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The purpose of this study is to examine the reported architectural approaches and governance mechanisms for digital business ecosystems (DBEs). A systematic literature review is employed, in which 92 relevant articles are selected for analysis. This study provides an overview of articles, reports the formal modeling notations, modeling viewpoints, and design patterns used for DBEs in the reviewed articles, discusses DBE governance mechanisms, and provides evidence of the alignment between DBE architecture and DBE governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal institutions, most prominently laws, impact society and also the economy by changing actors' behavior. How that impact can be conceptualized is in need of more elaboration. Klammer & Scorsone's (2022) recent publication opens avenues on how to understand the ways in which institutions can over-instruct, under-instruct and ambiguously instruct the behavior of actors. Sources of and direction for institutional change can then be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important way for the agrifood industry to continue to feed a growing world population as well as reduce its environmental impact is to extensively adopt Information Technologies that will "datafy" the industry. While the promises of datafication are high, the realization is lagging behind. We identify and discuss from an institutional economics point of view three related issues that help explain needs run behind realization: supply of data is separated from use of data; data quality, interoperability and standardization; and data completeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actors, including economists, carry a responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof seems obvious. In economics and among large numbers of economists this notion that economists should be responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof is not shared widely, as the financial crisis of 2007–8 and its aftermath indicated. We address related issues: economics has not really allowed conceptual space for the concept of responsibility. Responsibility, as commonly understood, is a duty or obligation of one particular individual towards others, such as individuals or institutions including the state. Individuals can thus be 'held responsible' for how their (lack of) actions affect others in a broad sense. We define responsibility as one's self-limiting and self-assumed obligation towards others to be aware of how one's actions have consequences for others – consequences which one is obliged to factor in when deciding upon an action. In this sense, we build on the work of Young ([2006]. Responsibility and Global Justice – a social connection model. Social Philosophy and Policy, 23 (1), 102–130.). Failure to factor in the consequences of one's actions on others trying to avoid damage to others, even more than seeking others' benefit, is a failure to behave responsibly. We discuss what this entails for the discussion about a professional code of conduct for economists. A code of conduct (rather than a law), i.e. a set of agreed upon rules to guide preferred behaviours of economists about what it means to act responsibly, will only prescribe to the extent that economists choose to have it affect their behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggesting socio-cultural values are selectors of institutions and institutional practices, and institutions in turn are selectors of (economic) behaviors, we investigate what explains the persistence of institutions that were aligned with past socio-cultural values when the values subscribed to in society have fundamentally changed. What, in other words, explains the persistence of obsolete institutions? We do so by investigating the labor market situation for academics in post-communist societies in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient knowledge and information transfer within as well as across organizational boundaries are of a proven importance for survival and growth of firms. At the same time, however, on the one hand, knowledge available within organizations is not always used to its full capacity, at times at the considerable detriment of organizations involved. Furthermore, on the other hand, despite the recognized importance of an efficient interorganizational knowledge transfer, many collaborations have not delivered on their promises. Merges and acquisitions deals, for instance, are prone to fail. The goal of this article is to propose and illustrate a conceptual argument why knowledge and information transfer that crosses departmental and firm boundaries, and in doing so often also domain or disciplinary boundaries, is challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose to analyze the supply chain not (just) as interconnected firms where products move from primary production, through processing, down to final consumer (user), but rather as collaborating firms that exchange information in order for each to function. This opens the analysis of supply chains up for institutional economic analysis and also allows one to acknowledge that information can be used strategically. Yet, information exchange can also be hampered because of a supply chain's structure—we focus on this. The difficulty of exchanging information is particularly important when an industry and its supply chain newly emerges or is disrupted. In such circumstances the way in which information is presented and used is not institutionalized yet in a way that works for the parties involved. We show the relevance of this approach to understanding supply chains by referencing the agrifood supply chain as it is on the cusp of being disrupted by the extensive use of Information Technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is about individuals collaborating to share existing knowledge and create new knowledge. Increasingly these collaborations cross organisational boundaries, like in R&D alliances. Many of these alliances are coopetitive, partners cooperate, but also compete with each other. Although knowledge sharing in coopetitive settings has been studied on the firm and the unit level, the micro (individual) level is underresearched. We consider individual alliance-related work performance of alliance members in a (moderately) coopetitive R&D alliance, drawing on social network theory and the organisational coordination perspective. We examine the influence of individual alliance members' position and level of activity in the alliance advice network on their work performance. We also examine the substitutive role of the alliance formal network, representing the official channels of knowledge sharing. We suggest that individuals' work performance is better explained by their position in the formal network, rather than in the advice network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we suggest an institutional economic approach to classifying government policies, thus offering suggestions to improve the expected outcomes of government policy as well. We elaborate the argument for industrial policy-government policy to directly influence investment and resource allocation decisions by private companies. By adopting dimensions for industries that are stable over time, we can suggest which policies are suitable for which industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even when the neoliberal ideology of the free market was more dominant than it now is, the state was involved in economic activities that could be undertaken by private firms. State capitalism takes increasingly diverse forms, including beyond direct, partial or even indirect ownership. This paper briefly reviews some of these forms without claiming to be exhaustive as the shape state capitalism takes differs widely across the institutionalized contexts of countries. We assess state capitalism using Polanyi's double movement framework and argue that this framework needs adaptation to novel forms of state capitalism that include, e.g., state-owned multinationals and sovereign wealth funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How markets and firms function is critically related to what knowledge and information is exchanged between whom, how quickly. Exchange of (symbolic) information needs to be properly institutionalized in order to be understood by others, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, cannot avoid being ambiguous to some degree as well (Dolfsma et al. 2011). Ambiguity allows for the dissent that allows for innovation in the broadest sense of the term. Institutionalization of communication is community-specific. The tension between institutionalization of and ambiguity in communication explains why innovations cannot depart too much from what is known and accepted in a community to be (ultimately) accepted as a legitimate novelty. The view of markets and firms as settings for institutionalized communication and knowledge exchange offers a perspective that institutional economists are well positioned for to offer insights on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industrial development in sub-Saharan Africa is perhaps more affected by the quality of institutions than that of other regions. We investigate what alternatives managers may have and what their firms would need to function in case the institutional furniture they encounter is of low quality. We find that, in high quality institutional environments, management spending effort to deal with the authorities and to navigate regulations negates the effect of the institutional environment. Managers do not need to spend such efforts. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that the positive effect of high-quality institutional environments on firm performance is enhanced by making informal payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese acquirers spent $38 million on mergers and acquisitions in 1990, and $666.1 billion on mergers and acquisitions in 2016. As the Chinese merger market has grown, so too has the literature on its performance. Little is known, however, about with whom Chinese firms can best do business. We aim to fill this gap. We suggest that because the liabilities of distance, foreignness, and outsideness complicate acquisition performance, targets in countries and regions which add fewer of these liabilities will outperform those that add more. We plot the overseas expansion of Chinese acquirers, and compare the performance of Chinese acquisitions, within the Greater China region, within the Confucian cultural sphere, and between Asian and the West. In each case, we predict that increasing cultural distance decreases performance. Then, because the Continental European governance system is institutionally more familiar to the Chinese system than it is to the Anglo-Saxon system, we consider the Chinese experience in each of these two systems. Our results largely support our hypotheses built on the partner location performance hierarchy argument, but we also point to the limits of the generalizability of existing literature in understanding the Chinese market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing a unique, domain-similar database including all horticulturalists in a major flower-producing country, this paper shows that a firm’s central position in a network significantly improves its financial performance. The effect of strategic positioning in a network is in large part mediated through its enhanced innovativeness. Strategically positioning in a network of firms contributesmoreto firm performance,bothdirectly as well as indirectly, than other strategic options a firm has available, such as seeking scale, seeking to diversify, pursuing cost advantages, or locating in a cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Firm survival or reproduction does not occur as a matter of course. Especially under circumstances in which uncertainty and equivocality prevail is firm reproduction potentially problematic. Uncertainty prevails when there is insufficient or inadequate information to assess a situation, equivocality when the information available is multiinterpretable. Firm routines, social networks in a firm, and an organization’s identity can explain how a firm reproduces. We offer suggestions as to which of these will contribute to firm reproduction under what circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on “open innovation” so far focuses almost exclusively on strategic issues. In this largely conceptual paper we propose behavioral foundations for knowledge exchange and knowledge sharing to address this gap in the literature. Innovation and knowledge development that result from knowledge transfer, is an uncertain and cumulative process that typically involves a number of parties. Knowledge transfer between people and firms has been fruitfully studied from a structural or network perspective. The social network literature however, faces an “action problem”. Focusing on structural elements such as an agent’s position in a network and the types of relations entertained cannot explain why actors actually do share knowledge. The exchange of knowledge is elusive and is a discretionary act for the people involved, certainly in the case of open innovation (OI). It is argued here that social network analysis is to be complemented by the concept of gift exchange, drawing on social exchange literature. Gift exchange – following Mauss’ dictum to “give, receive and reciprocate”– establishes obligations between people especially under circumstances of ambiguity, which explain why and how knowledge exchange relations are established, persist, and may also end. Relationships in a social network and the social capital that inheres in these cannot be drawn on at will to exchange knowledge. These obligations established by gift exchange between individuals who share a connection explain why agents exchange knowledge with each other even in the absence of markets or hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In some societies, entrepreneurs coming from outside of a community (i.e., outside entrepreneurs) are more active than entrepreneurs from within the community (i.e., inside entrepreneurs). Institutions and relationships that entrepreneurs entertain may hamper insiders from starting or succeeding. Institutional economics and anthropology suggest that, rather than outside entrepreneurs having more resources, the case may be that inside entrepreneurs could be hampered by existing institutions that blind and social relations that bind. Outsiders, however, may be less inclined to generate societal value in a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Firm reorganizations deeply affect employees. Management can reorganize in different ways, focusing on costs or acknowledging the involvement of employees. The latter implies following a social contract that complements incomplete (formal) labor contracts. Little is known about how the way in which firms reorganize affects their subsequent performance. Should a firm reorganize more socially, keeping the concerns of employees in mind as evident from an existing social contract, or should it focus on control the future direction of the firm and the costs made? We show that reorganizing more socially does not increase firm performance ex post, but taking more time when reorganizing does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three major surveys of professional journalists, in 1976, 1986, and 1996, suggest that the vast majority consider themselves to be neutral, objective, and balanced observers, whose role is merely to provide information. But how neutral is the media, in terms of its orientation and effects on the behavior of the markets? In this paper, we unite a number of literatures to suggest that by choosing what event to report, how much and how frequent to report an event, and by choosing what descriptive tone to adopt in their coverage, the media has a non-neutral impact on the economy. We report evidence to suggest that: (1) the media helps set the public agenda, by promoting certain events and causes, for better or for worse; (2) the media influence the public's perception of risk, by disproportionately sensationalizing risk and by emphasizing probable negative consequences over probably positive ones; (3) the media influences elections and their outcomes; (4) the media influences the public's perception of the manager, the reputation of the firm, and the goods that the firm produces; (5) the media shapes consumer sentiment and the consumers' willingness to spend; and (6) the media shapes business sentiment and influences both firm- and market-level behavior. In doing so, we demonstrate conclusively that the media is not neutral: the media alters the public's perception of reality. In other words, we suggest not only that the media reports the news, but also shapes the world in which we live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the prospects of a banker's oath, the epistemic aspects of economic practice, and the power of speech acts in ethical oaths in economics and business.

The authors reflect on the journal "Review of Social Economy" (RoSE). They states that RoSE has published articles that covers relationship between economics, ethics, and social values since 1942. They mentions the changes that will be applied in the journal such as the introduction of a "Speaker's Corner" which will features papers that cover related social economics issues and the scale back of book review section to thematically related books.

Research in the domain of 'Innovation Studies' has been claimed to allow for the study of how technology will develop in the future. Some suggest that the National and Sectoral Innovation Systems literature has become bogged down, however, into case studies of how specific institutions affect innovation in a specific country. A useful notion for policy makers in particular, Balzat and Hanusch (2004 Recent trends in the research on national innovation systems Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14(2): 197-210) argued that there is a need for NIS studies to develop complementary and also quantitative methods in order to generate new insights that are comparable across national borders. We use data for patents granted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to map innovation systems. Groupings of patents into primary and secondary classes (co-classification) can be used as relational indicators. Knowledge from one class may be more easily used in another class when a co-classification relation exists. Using social network analysis, we map the co-classification of patents among classes and thus indicate what characterizes an innovation system. A main contribution of this paper is methodological, adding to the repertoire of methods NIS studies use and using information from patents in a different way. Policy makers may also find benefits in the social network analysis of the complete set of patents granted by the WIPO to firms and individuals in a country. Social network analysis indicates what innovation activity occurs in a countries and which fields of technology are likely to give rise to innovative products in the near future. We offer such analysis for the Dutch and Indian Innovation Systems. This social network analysis could also be done for a sector innovation system, and we do so for nanotech to determine empirically the knowledge field relevant for this emerging scientific domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the idea that institutional reproduction is not obvious and that institutions are vulnerable has significant conceptual implications. Institutional vulnerability can arise through communication between actors in a common language. To apprehend this requires an elaboration of John Searle's (1995, 2005) argument that language is the fundamental institution. Ontologically, language delineates and circumscribes a community. A community cannot function without a common language, and language at the same time constitutes a community's boundaries, allowing for focused and effective communication within a community. Communication through language introduces ambiguity as well, however, and so institutional reproduction, mediated by language, is a deeply contentious process. Communication across boundaries may particularly "irritate" a system, as Niklas Luhmann has argued. How can institutions then be re-identified through change? Searle's general form for institutions is in need of elaboration. We develop arguments by drawing upon Luhmann's (1995) systems analysis and notion of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appropriability regime (Teece 1986) that innovating service firms face is generally weaker than what firms in manufacturing sectors face. An important means to appropriate benefits from innovation that service firms can use is their reputation. This conceptual paper offers insights into how a firm's reputation helps in appropriating value from innovation. Depending on the nature of a service, different kinds of third parties come into play in establishing reputation. In helping firms establish a reputation, such third parties influence customer decisions to acquire a service. While 'to produce a service is to organise a solution to a problem', and thus does not involve a third party, is true for pure services in particular, for a service firm to benefit from innovation such others are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists tend to see the market as a default option for social order and a role for government only when markets fail. Developing a convincing analysis of the role of government in economic processes, however, needs to start by considering government failure in its own terms. Drawing on insights from institutional economics, law and economics and the philosophy of law, emphasizing the necessity of rules for the economy, this paper develops the concept of government failure. The paper identifies and develops four different types of government failure. Government can set rules for economic processes and actors that are (1) too specific, (2) too broad, (3) that are arbitrary, or (4) that conflict with other rules it has set out to address other, related issues (possibly primarily non-economic). Government failure is illustrated in the context of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) law as it relates to Anti-Trust law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an institutionalist perspective, we identify five sources of policy conflict. Each may explain why policies intended to obtain particular goals for an institutionalized practice may have unintended consequences. We illustrate by analyzing attempts at introducing market-oriented reform in health care provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on economist Amartya Sen's views on the impact of social decisions in solving economic problems. Sen states that economic problems including poverty, hunger, and violation of political freedom impact the well-being and social life of an individual. Sen believes that a capability approach can be followed to examine economic issues and to improve the quality of life of people.

This study makes a number of observations about the way in which the current crisis in particular, but economic crises more generally, are reported upon by the media. Considering terminology used to describe the financial crisis of 2007/2008 by employing a dataset of 956 articles from The Economist, we study what terms are used why, and how they evolve. We consider how the frequency of negative emotional terms and the frequency of negative economic terms increase from the period of no-crisis to the period of the crisis. Increasing incidence lowers levels of consumer confidence. We predict that as the crisis evolves the nature of the terminology used to describe it will change, and that the present crisis will receive a special name, like the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. We explore a number of possibilities, and conclude that the preferred name will be the "Credit Crunch." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual Property Rights take on a different significance in the knowledge economy and on the internet. Their expanding role is not necessarily a beneficial development for the economy a dynamic welfare analysis indicates. The effects of IPRs is compounded by the newly emerging relations between producers and consumers in which the latter are increasingly acting as dependent co-producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, contrary to popular belief, it is argued on the basis of transaction cost economics that consumers will become dependent subcontractors in electronic markets. Consumers invest time and effort building up a relationship with a producer, (r)e-tailer, or intermediary—an investment that is idiosyncratic. The intermediary only needs to invest in generic assets that enable him or her to automate the process of collecting and processing customer information needed to differentiate products and discriminate prices. As subcontractors, consumers face high switching costs and are thus dependent on intermediaries. Virtual communities of consumers that organize countervailing power will not mitigate this tendency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion is the quintessential post-modernist consumer practice, or so many hold. In this contribution, I argue that, on the contrary, fashion should be understood as a means of communicating one's commitment to modernist values. I introduce the framework of the Social Value Network, to relate such values to institutionalized consumption behavior, allowing one to signal to others. Modernist values are not homogenous, and are in important ways contradictory, giving rise to the dynamics of fashion that can be observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In continuous interaction with their audience, institutions for providing pop music became established from the 1960s onwards. These included, pop music radio, disc jockeys (DJ) and commercial charts. Pop music's "conquest" of the Netherlands was peculiar in comparison to other countries, including adjacent ones. This paper analyzes the advent of pop music in the context of the institutional sclerosis of Dutch radio and Dutch music press in particular, in terms of the theoretical framework of institutional economics. It argues that the slow spread of pop music in the Netherlands, compared with other countries, was linked to the conflict between the sociocultural values of the established public broadcasters and those of the emerging pop music industry.

In this article, we analyze recent dynamics of the Dutch health care sector, a hybrid system of public, private and professional elements, in terms of clashing discourses. Although these elements are intricately interwoven, this does not mean that the system is stable. Most notably, since the eighties the introduction of more market elements in the health care system has been widely debated. Hospitals introduced different methods commonly used in businesses, for instance. The position of managers in the institutions of health care has become more central. A discourse analysis shows the concomitant patterns of institutional change in the health care sector. We distinguish four different discourses concerning health care: economic, political, medical-professional and caring discourses. These different discourses give rise to, for example, different views of good care, the character and position of the patient, and leadership in health care organizations--views that sometimes clash intensely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Knowledge" takes a central place in economics. This paper shows that the metaphor pervasively used in neoclassical economics to understand knowledge is that of "capital". Taking capital as a metaphor of knowledge introduces problems in neoclassical economic theory, as becomes apparent when economics addresses issues of learning and technological development. Instead, it is argued that economists could learn from what philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle and Michael Polanyi have said about how to understand knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Value theory is central to economics. Whenever new economic theories appear on stage, their theory of value is different. I classify value theories along Locke's lines of primary and secondary qualities. When value is thought to inhere in objects, value is a primary quality. The marginalists perceive value as given to objects by autonomous individuals independent of their environment (much like monads) with given preferences. Value here is a secondary quality. Both are unsatisfactory; value is a social construct. The question arises why social value theory, which Clark and Anderson worked on around the turn of the nineteenth century, did not take root. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the new section of the journal "Review of Social Economy" entitled "Speaker's Corners" and invites contributions for the section.

This article provides information on the reorganization of the editorial team of "Review of Social Economy," The Association for Social Economics announced the appointment of four editors by the executive council to succeed editor John Davis. Intentions to maintain the journal's broad scope with respect to issues covered and perspectives presented, to foster productive inflows of ideas from neighboring social sciences. Individuals and practices are socially embedded and economic problems cannot be divorced from issues of human dignity, ethics and philosophy.

Introduces a series of articles on social economy.