Between Hierarchies and Markets The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization

by Thompson, Grahame F.

• ISBN13: 9780198775270
• ISBN10: 019877527X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book conducts a survey into the ways in which the word 'network' has been deployed in a wide range of literature. In particular, it offers a commentary on how the idea of networks has been used to illustrate contemporary forms of socio-economic organization broadly conceived to also include the political aspects of networks. The book brings some intellectual clarity to the discussion of networks by asking whether it is possible to construct a clearly demarcated idea of a network as a separable form of socio-economic coordination and governance mechanism with its own consistent logic. In doing this, the primary contrast is with hierarchies and markets as alternative and already well understood forms of socio-economic coordination each with their own distinctive logic.

Author Biography

Grahame F. Thompson is Professor of Political Economy and Head of the Department of Government and Politics at the Open University. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Grifith University, UNAM Mexico, and Curtin University. He is the co-author of Globalization in Question (with Paul Hirst, 1999) and editor of Governing the European Economy (2001).

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Considering Networks: A Methodological Introduction	1	(20)
Part 1: Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Hierarchies, Markets, and Networks: A Preliminary Comparison	21	(32)
Social Network Analysis, Transaction-Cost Analysis, and Actor-Network Theory: Three Approaches to Networks	53	(34)
Networks and the Issues of `Excess', the `Gift', `Non-exchange', and `Trust'	87	(24)
Part 2: Applications and Empirical Comparisons
Industrial Organization as Networks	111	(38)
Political Networks and the Politics of Network Governance	149	(40)
Networks and the International System	189	(36)
Conclusions	225	(14)
References	239	(24)
Index	263