Sometimes you may judge the book by its cover. Those familiar with the works of Guglielmo Meardi know very well that his name as the author usually signals a controversial, if not a provocative content. Italian-born Meardi, who currently is the Head of prestigious Industrial Relations Research Unit at the Warwick Business School, has been covering developments in the field of work and employment relations in Europe for more than two decades, paying special attention to transformations of that field in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). He pioneered field research in the Polish a# liates of multinational corporations. In $%%$ Meardi stepped forward with a thesis that fuzziness, disorganization and hybridity of Polish industrial relations make our country look like an ‘American Trojan horse (Meardi 2002), posing a threat to the foundations of European Social Model. Ten years later the Author does not hesitate to formulate even more acute diagnosis, writing openly about EU’s lack of capability to maintain the social dimension of European integration after the 2004-2007 enlargement. In his book Meardi claims that the accession of post-communist countries to the EU produced a convenient excuse for undermining the idea of the intrinsic nature of work as a value, which should not be assessed only from a market perspective, as either profitable or not. What happened in the New Member States (NMS) from the CEE after the accession, serves as the evidence.
W następstwie nasilonej w ostatnich latach – głównie w kontekście globalnego kryzysu finansowego – krytyki ekonomii jako nauki (w tym zwłaszcza teorii tzw. głównego nurtu ekonomii, osadzonego w tradycji neoklasycznej) pojawiły się próby jej ulepszeń i modyfikacji. Ważnym elementem tych zmian było włączenie do rozważań ekonomicznych również koncepcji z zakresu socjologii, psychologii czy nawet nauk przyrodniczych. Dość powszechnie uznano bowiem, że wzrost komplikacji współczesnej gospodarki i nawracające kryzysy wręcz wymuszają potrzebę podejścia interdyscyplinarnego. Wśród tych nowych koncepcji i ujęć jedną z najważniejszych, a przy tym najbardziej przydatnych, jest koncepcja tzw. zakorzenienia (embeddedness) społecznego gospodarki, wywodząca się z prac Marka Granovettera i, szerzej, tzw. nowej socjologii ekonomicznej (new economic sociology). Koncepcja ta – szeroko omówiona w artykule – otwiera szerokie pole badaczom poszczególnych aspektów życia gospodarczego i społecznego. Koncepcja ta ma szerokie zastosowania w wielu obszarach badań ekonomicznych. Umożliwia ona także zastosowanie nowych metod i narzędzi badawczych, w tym badań jakościowych. Szersze wykorzystanie tej koncepcji w badaniach ekonomicznych mogłoby wyeliminować niektóre niedostatki analizy charakterystyczne dla ekonomii neoklasycznej. Uwzględnienie relacji interpersonalnych oraz społecznego kontekstu decyzji i działań gospodarczych może wzbogacić analizę, zarówno na szczeblu mikro-, jak i makroekonomicznym.
EN
As the result of strong criticism of economics as a science (particularly of the ‘mainstream economics’, deeply set in the neoclassical tradition), which appeared in the last years in the context of the global financial crisis, there have been attempts to improve or modify economic theory. One important element of this change was the inclusion of many concepts taken from sociology, psychology, or even natural sciences into economic reasoning. It has been commonly agreed that the increased complexity of modern economy and the recurring crises imply the need of interdisciplinary research. Among the new concepts and approaches introduced into economics, one of the most important and useful is the concept of social embeddedness of economy, derived from the works of Mark Granvetter and, more broadly, from the so-called new economic sociology. This concept – widely discussed in this paper – opens up a broad field for the research on various aspects of socioeconomic activity. It can be applied in many areas of economic research. It also enables us to use new methods and tools in economic research, including qualitative analyses. A wider use of this concept could help to eliminate some shortcomings of economic analysis typical of mainstream economics. Taking account of interpersonal relations and social context of economic decisions and economic activity can significantly enrich economic analysis both on micro and macro levels.
RU
В результате усилившейся в последние годы, главным образом в контексте глобального финансового кризиса, критики экономики как науки (особенно теорий так называемого главного течения экономической мысли, опирающихся на неоклассическую традицию), появились попытки ее совершенствования и модификации. Важным элементом этих изменений было включение в рассуждения об экономике также концепций из области социологии, психологии и даже естественных наук. Стало понятно, что усложняющаяся современная экономика и повторяющиеся кризисы заставляют применить междисциплинарный подход. Среди этих новых концепций и подходов одной из самих важных и одновременно самых пригодных, является концепция так называемого социального укоренения (embeddedness), исходящая из трудов Марка Грановеттера и так называемой новой экономической социологии (new economic sociology). Эта концепция, широко представленная в статье, открывает широкий простор для исследования отдельных аспектов экономической и общественной жизни. Эта концепция нашла широкое применение во многих сферах экономических исследований. Она также позволяет применять новые методы и исследовательские инструменты, в том числе качественные исследования. Более широкое использование этой концепции в экономических исследованиях могло бы устранить некоторые недостатки анализа, характерные для неоклассической экономической науки. Учет межчеловеческих отношений и социального контекста хозяйственных решений и действий может обогатить анализ как на уровне микро, так и макро.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory presents a complex argument that spans numerous academic disciplines and combines empirical and theoretical analyses. Its radical conclusion has inspired activists and social critics from all sides of the ideological spectrum. Critics and commentators have questioned MacIntyre’s critique of modern moral philosophy and the plausibility of the concluding prescription, concerning the need to create new forms of community. But it has less often been asked in what sense the book presents a unified perspective. In other words, how do the premises of MacIntyre’s argument, presented and defended throughout the text, warrant the conclusion? In this article, I partially formalize the main argument of After Virtue, discussing the grounds for each premise, and explaining how they ground the book’s radical conclusion. In doing this, I argue that economic sociology, specifically Karl Polanyi’s theory of the modern market economy, plays a large role in supporting MacIntyre’s claims. After presenting the main argument of the text, I draw upon the social theory elaborated in Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, specifically its theory of the relationship between vulnerability, dependence, and virtuous networks of giving and receiving, while briefly noting recent sociological criticisms of Polanyi, to argue that we have reason to be skeptical of MacIntyre’s empirical claims concerning the vicious character of modern social structures in After Virtue.
The paper combines a broad theoretical framework of comparable capitalism with the insights from new economic sociology and new institutional economics to understand and assess mechanisms of China's evolution. During the last three decades China's economic system has undergone a great transformation from communism to some form of state-led capitalism. The evolutionary approach that balanced the interests of economic and political actors led to the gradual introduction of a capitalist institutional framework, but also preserved the immense role of the Communist Party. In the course of the reforms, former direct control over the economy has been replaced by more discretionary measures like corporate governance (which conserved the extensive patronage system), and Party affiliation (which allowed for political penetration of the private sector). Supplying examples of mounting economic waste, I argue that China's present variety of capitalism is hardly an optimal solution, and the further development will strictly depend on state and Party withdrawal from economic contorl.
This article sums up the results of research oriented to analyze dynamics and outputs related to the development of two different technological parks in the North-East of Italy: the Area Science Park of Trieste and the Vega of Venezia. The research has tried to find an answer to the following question: what is the regulation model more efficient to implement good innovation policies? The article argues that, to achieve an efficient innovation governance, it is needed a strong regulation by the innovation broker - the central hub of the innovation network, able to support interactions among innovation-makers and innovation-takers. To test this hypothesis, the empirical research has used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In the Area Science Park, good innovation performance appears strictly connected to strong regulation of the technological transfer process. In the Vega, differently, low innovation performances are combined with weak innovation regulation. The paper concludes that institutional settings at the local level can be powered by a model of governance innovation able to combine autonomous interactions among main actors involved in technological innovation with a strong regulation of the process by the innovation broker.
Both trust and risk are issues widely discussed in the contemporary sociology, but researchers usually investigate each of them separately. So far in empirical research done in Poland no one has analysed both phenomena from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. In his book Zaufanie i ryzyko w doświadczeniu przedsiębiorców (Trust and Risk in Entrepreneurial Experience, Katowice, University of Silesia Press 2016) Łukasz Trembaczewski conducts such an analysis. the purpose of the book is, as the title states, investigation of trust and risk from the perspective of modern entrepreneurs.
Sociology of the economy and economic sociology both can be used as a name for specific subdisciplines of sociology. In this paper, by introducing theory of socioeconomic structuralism, I off er a solution that may reconcile the supporters of both competing concepts. I claim that fruitless competition may be avoided through demarcating respective areas of interest. Th e sociology of the economy could be defined as a sociological view of the economic structure, which could also cover the issues of interest socioeconomics, i.e. the impact of non-economic factors on economic phenomena and processes. Whereas economic sociology would deal with the impact of economic structures on non-economic spheres of social life. In this article, I will thoroughly examine two well-known concepts: Homans's theory of exchange and Becker's economic sociology and through their critical analysis I will define my proposals.
The article discusses the cultural values of the welfare state in Sweden by combining the characteristics and principles of the Swedish welfare state type with selected classifications of attitudes towards the welfare state and the idea of welfare culture. The author compares indicated ideas of the Swedish welfare culture with Swedish cultural characteristics presented in two typologies of culture, in which Swedish society is characterized without much reference to the characteristics of the welfare state. The purpose of this article is to show the relationship between characteristics of Swedish welfare state and the values and attitudes of Swedish society. An additional purpose of this article is to draw attention to the possibility of making comparisons between the structure of the welfare state in a country and its culture by using existing typologies of culture. The article ends by stating a clear similarity between the ideas of the Swedish welfare culture and features of Swedish culture in other typologies of culture and high usability of evaluation solutions of welfare state in terms of the welfare culture.
Mainly due to his popular The Defeat of Solidarity, David Ost is very well known to the Polish audience. His analysis related to industrial relations developments in the context of the class notion have been widely discussed. In the Special Issue: ‘Class A! er Communism’ of the East European Politics and Societies and Cultures however, David Ost is taking us for a fascinating journey with an aim to discover a historical dimension of the concept of class (or rather the social structure analysis) not in Poland only, but also in the other postsocialist east European countries. In this sense, David Ost has gathered 12 different essays of the research and critique cases of the class concept in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. All focus on the concept’s analysis under the state socialism and during the transition period.
Due to the central role multinational corporations (MNCs) in Central and Eastern Europe, there is a growing body of research which explores the speci! city of their employment relations from a comparative perspective. " e problems discussed in the literature include, among others, the di# usion of managerial and employment practices of MNCs in host countries, the scope of their adaptation to local employment standards, as well as the perspectives of the institutionalisation of transnational union solidarity and social dialogue. While the majority of the existing books and articles are based on the case study method exploring individual company cases in selected sectors, the combination of case studies with cross-sectoral quantitative surveys and institutional-legal analysis is rare. Even less research results is published in national languages other than English which constitutes a considerable barrier in the dissemination of knowledge to a wider audience of academics and practitioners at the national level. It is also exceptionally rare that the books are co-authored by both scientists and trade union experts (fragment of text).
Conventional economic theories assume that competing firms act independently. This theoretical assumption is applied to economic policies and anti-trust legislation. In contrast, economic sociology describes competition as a special type of social action that is oriented towards others. More specifically, to remain in the market, competing firms monitor one another and cooperate by establishing inter-organisational social ties. This paper demonstrates that increasing market pressures, including higher levels of competition and stronger bargaining power among exchange partners, does not disrupt social ties but promotes them. Data for the analysis were collected in 2007 from 501 managers of retail chains and their suppliers in five Russia’s cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, and Tyumen). The sample includes firms of different sizes that operate in the food and electronics sectors of the consumer market.
Whether I study or watch television is a choice to invest or to consume that parallels the decision whether to use my income to spend or to save. At the forefront of such an understanding of society as if a market, based on atomized individual decision making, has been Gary Becker. As Becker puts it in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1992: “My research uses the economic approach to analyze social issues that range beyond those usually conceived by economists”. According to Becker many activities thought to be noneconomic in nature are actually economic problems. Economic theory can thus help explain phenomena traditionally located outside the scope of economics, in the areas of law, sociology, biology, political science, and anthropology. The development of this economic imperialism is the most characteristic feature of his approach. Whilst Becker’s economic approach claims universal applicability, both its name and its content, despite disclaimers to the contrary, betray their origins within mainstream neoclassical economics. As Becker unwittingly confi rms, his concern is the universal projection of the market model.
There are significant hints of a strong relationship between the dynamics of real estate markets and financial crises from the second half of the 19th century until today. In spite of research accumulation, it is seemingly ignored that since the late 19th century several financial crises were caused by real estate bubbles, depending on the distinct characteristics of real estate markets. The paper supports the idea that real estate and financial crises show indeed similar and congruent characteristics since the 19th century. This concerns (1) the inherent tendency towards speculative bubbles, (2) the growing significance of globalized finance, (3) credit practices, (4) the close relationship between the banking system and real estate markets and (5) between the real estate business and the stock market. However, the investigation into real estate markets is not only interesting for understanding and explaining the genesis of modern economic crises, but also contributes to the understanding of the emergence of practices of speculation, the indebtedness of private households and social inequalities. Further research on real estate markets promises the contribution towards a better understanding of actors, practices and institutions in modern market society.
This is the continuation of the paper which appeared in the previous issue of WFES (7/1/4). In this article the author further develops the theoretical foundations of the socio-economic structuralism. In particular, the notions of economic and non-economic societal structures remain in focus. The author retains the economic determinist perspective and explores the ways through which the economic structure affects other structures of the society, including work in its many variations (material work, immaterial work, and quasi-work) as well as other aspects of social life such as culture in general and language in particular.
Professor Leszek Gilejko (1932-2013) was a prominent Polish humanist with consistent socialist political views. He was a very active scholar, a witness to and a participant in key academic, political and social events in Poland for more than half a century. For many years he presided over the Department of Sociology at the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). This is article is based on a conversation between professor Gilejko and his former student, professor Juliusz Gardawski in 2003. The transcript of the conversation was edited by Czesława Kliszko.
A monograph starts with a short introduction in which professor Wiesława Kozek wrote, ‘this book formed for a long time. Probably it was too long…’ Having read this book, I came to a conclusion that it might be an asset that Prof Kozek wrote this book without haste thus she wrote a systematic monograph which synthesizes two decades of the Polish Labour Market since its inception through the phase of institutionalisation till a firmly established institution of the labour market in Poland. Consequently, the outcome is an encyclopaedic study presenting in details intricate issues which concern not only the labour market, but other sociological aspects of labour relations. Due to the fact that a diachronic aspect is strongly emphasized in the monograph, the book became the first comprehensive history of development of the labour market in Poland after 1989.
In one of his last published books1, the late Professor Tadeusz Kowalik made effort to assess the post-1989 transformation of Polish economy. Th is book is special, because its author takes, on the basis of his own personal experiences, a very critical stand towards the neo-liberal reforms introduced by Leszek Balcerowicz. The main thesis of the book is that the ‘shock-therapy’ administered by Balcerowicz and his accolades was not only unnecessary but in fact harmed the Polish society who has been paying the price of those reforms up to this day, the clear evidence of which is, for example, a huge extent of social exclusion and high portion of citizens living in poverty. The author was always sensitive to social injustice, and a reader can easily see his attitude emanating from the pages of the book. Kowalik never really came to terms with the choices made by political elites of Poland in the early 1990s and their long-lasting consequences. In his view, the key decisions were taken back then by a narrow, powerful circle without true social consultation. Th e decision-makers unilaterally imposed their point of view and the manner in which the reforms were implemented. In Kowalik’s opinion some of the reforms could have been introduced in a diff erent way and at a diff erent pace, for instance, the state should not have hurried so much with liberalization and privatization. Kowalik claims that the major political error committed at the time came from a naïve assumption that there were only two possible paths of development: socialism or market economy, while, in fact, there were numerous alternative scenarios available, presented by Janos Kornai in his prominent book ‘The Way to Free Economy’ or in a textbook ‘From Marx to market’ by Polish expatriate economists Włodzimierz Brus of Oxford and Kazimierz Łaski of Linz. (fragment of text)
The Irish 'Social Partnership' is the way that corporatist accommodates the trade unions, farmers, community and voluntary sector of organisations. It was the foundation for a period of rapid growth, so-called 'Celtic Tiger', but now most of us have little doubt that social partnership has been a key factor in the economic success of the Republic of Ireland. This simple 'tripartite' model became a platform for negotiations between groups of various interests and aspirations. Now 'Social Partnership' is open to criticism on ground of effectiveness but it would be a mistake to renounce to it. The important question is how democracy may be deepened within social partnership and other similar model as a potential successor. What has developed may contribute to the theorising of 'Social Partnership' as a new form of 'multi-level' and 'flexible' governance and is considered as an instrument of direct participatory democracy. Social Partnership became an important process in Europe since the 1990's and each country had surprisingly different experiences. This paper examines the origins and significance of the social dialogue in relation to a financial, fiscal and social crisis and also a distrust of legitimacy for the political elite in Ireland.
This paper presents what may be regarded as a novel approach to social theory. Whilst laying stress on the economic structure, the theory views it as embedded within a broader societal context. According to the theory, society is viewed as a set of four structures. A set of categories for analysis of those structures is depicted and the most detailed presentation is devoted to the economy. In this case, it includes such innovative notions as quasi-work, lumpenwork and the whole theory of ownership of labour power. This implies an analysis of the differences between the legal and socio-economic approach to property.
Krzysztof Jasiecki’s monograph is focused on varieties of capitalism and analysis of the Polish variation of capitalism in this theoretical context. ! e main frame of reference the author employs is the Hall and Soskice model (2001). Nevertheless, Jasiecki also reaches to other notable conceptual frameworks in the field of debate on contemporary capitalism crafted by Amable, Nölke and Vliegenthart, as well as Bohle and Greskovits.
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