What determines the value an MNC's headquarters adds to its own affiliates? In this paper, we shed light on this question by linking the embeddedness view of the multinational corporation to the literature on parenting advantage. We test our hypotheses on an original dataset of 124 manufacturing subsidiaries located in Europe. Our results indicate that the external embeddedness of the MNC is an antecedent to headquarters' value creation. We find that headquarters' investments into their own relationships with the subsidiaries' contexts are positively related to the value added by headquarters. Furthermore, this relationship is stronger when the subsidiary itself is strongly embedded. We discuss implications for the MNC literature, embeddedness research, and the literature on parenting and headquarters' roles. (authors' abstract)

In 1987 a book by Chris Freeman with the title “Technology policy and economic performance. Lessons from Japan” was published. This book turned out to be the birth certificate of the systems of innovation perspective which came to enjoy a tremendous popularity the next three decades. The topic of this thesis is within the field of systems of innovation.  This approach is extensively used today and the systems of innovation is an extensive field of studies; there is a growing interest and a well-established group of researchers deal with the concept and set the research agenda. Despite the great interest and the extensive work so far, the concept is challenged by noteworthy conceptual and methodological ambiguities and limitations. The aim of this thesis is to advance a theoretical framework of the systems of innovation perspective by adopting an actor-based perspective. From a theoretical perspective, the dissertation pinpoints the system of innovation at the interplay between two rationales: a territorial rationale and a functional rationale. The intention of this theoretical framework is to shed light upon the variety of actors operating within a system of innovation. Based on different logics or rationalities, actors understand and behave differently which has an impact on the behaviour and performance of the system. The assumption is that the different rationalities influence the innovation process, and how activities are organized and carried out. In the empirical backdrop of the thesis, the Swedish system of innovation is analysed in terms of how innovation policy discourse and practice have developed over time. The territorial based system of innovation is analysed through three instances: VINNOVA, the Swedish National Innovation Strategy and the Innovation Council, all considered to be relevant in understanding the embeddedness of ideas on innovation within Swedish politics and practice. The functional based system of innovation is addressed through the role of the large firm Ericsson in the systems of innovation. Ericsson has been chosen as an actor in a system of innovation, and therefore attention is paid to the interplay with the territorial actors, such as the state and universities. Several conflicts of interests characterize the relation between Ericsson on the one hand and the university and government on the other. The interplay between the two types of systems of innovation is further concretized in the analysis of the Mobile Heights case, an innovation cluster programme. Three main analytical conclusions have been emerged from the empirical research, discussed in terms of policy makers, policy implementers and practitioners pinpointing to a fairly loose system where different interests, networks and practices can only be partially and temporarily aligned.

Drawing on recent discussions of relational embeddedness and socio-technical agencement, this thesis analyses the relationship between stock trading and lay investors’ daily lives, including their social relations, activities, events, devices, places, work and ways of thinking. Taiwan’s stock market provides an appropriate location for investigation because of the dominance of lay investors in the market and the high proportion of Taiwan’s adult population who engage in stock trading. The data were obtained from three main sets of sources: in-depth interviews, document analysis and ethnographic observation. I argue that lay market actors are not only framed by the market’s mechanisms, but also by daily-life structures. The Taiwan Stock Exchange, as an electronic, anonymous financial market, has been a challenge to the embeddedness approach due to the absence of direct interaction between the parties to transactions. This study presents another aspect of socio-economic relationships in the market: the role of financial-market activity in wider social interactions. Like taking part in any popular social activity, lay investors’ social ties are maintained and expended by engaging in stock trading. Social relations and stock trading are woven together and form a largely seamless whole, part of lay investors’ daily life. The socio-technical agencements of lay investors contain distinctive features: diversity, bricolage, use of non-professional ‘devices’, action in non-financial places, everyday means of controlling market risk and association with everyday events. The differences between the agencements of lay investors and professional practitioners produce an asymmetry of calculative capabilities between market actors. Superior calculative capabilities tend to give an advantage to professional practitioners in the market, but these strengths are constrained by political and economic factors. This study sheds light on micro social factors, which are comparable with economic, institutional and psychological explanations, in accounting for lay investors’ behaviours in financial markets. The analysis also suggests the compatibility of the three important social science approaches to economic agents: Granovetter’s embeddedness, Zelizer’s relational work and Callon’s agencement.

Voluntary turnover has become a problem for many organizations in today's society. The cost of this turnover reaches beyond organizational impact, but also affects the employees themselves. For this reason, there has been a plethora of research conducted by both academicians and practitioners on the causes and consequences of voluntary turnover. The purpose of this study is to test the validity and generalizability of the job embeddedness model of voluntary turnover to the information technology (IT) industry. The IT field has been plagued with high turnover rates in recent years. In this study, the job embeddedness model (Mitchell et al., 2001) is applied to a population sample consisting of health care information technology employees.

This study was designed to investigate the moderating effect of embeddedness on the commitment and turnover intentions relationship. Embeddedness was examined as a key variable that links the commitment and turnover literatures together. Job embeddedness was expected to moderate the relationship between job commitment and job turnover intentions, while organizational embeddedness was expected to moderate the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational turnover intentions. Responses from 154 employed individuals were collect for this study. Data was collected using a web-based survey format. Psychometric data was collected with the use of a demographics questionnaire, as well as embeddedness (job and organizational), organizational commitment, and turnover intentions scales. A moderated regression analysis found that both job and organizational embeddedness moderated the commitment-turnover relationship, but in the opposite way as proposed. These relationships can help us better understand why employees remain within their organizations and jobs.

Following a disaster, an organisation’s ability to recover is influenced by its internal capacities, but also by the people, organisations, and places to which it is connected. Current approaches to organisational resilience tend to focus predominantly on an organization's internal capacities and do not adequately consider the place-based contexts and networks in which it is embedded. This thesis explores how organisations’ connections may both hinder and enable organisational resilience. Organisations in the Canterbury region of New Zealand experienced significant and repeated disruptions as a result of two major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks throughout 2010 and 2011. This thesis draws upon 32 case studies of organisations located in three severely damaged town centres in Canterbury to assess the influence that organisations’ place-based connections and relational networks had on their post-earthquake trajectories. The research has four objectives: 1) to examine the ways organisations connected to their local contexts both before and after the earthquakes, 2) to explore the characteristics of the formal and informal networks organisations used to aid their response and recovery, 3) to identify the ways organisations’ connections to their local contexts and support networks influenced their ability to recover following the earthquakes, and finally, 4) to develop approaches to assess resilience that consider these extra-organisational connections. The thesis contests the fiction that organisations recover and adapt independently from their contexts following disasters. Although organisations have a set of internal capacities that enable their post-disaster recovery, they are embedded within external structures that constrain and enable their adaptive options following a disaster. An approach which considers organisations’ contexts and networks as potential sources of organisational resilience has both conceptual and practical value. Refining our understanding of the influence of extra-organisational connections can improve our ability to explain variability in organisational outcomes following disasters and foster new ways to develop and manage organisational resilience.

This study delves into the local food system of Eugene, Oregon to focus on this community’s small-scale growers and their distribution strategies. The various distribution strategies open to small-scale local growers each require their own kind of work. In determining how to allocate their time and energy, growers consider these activities alongside the benefits that each distribution strategy offers. Certain distribution arrangements with smaller bulk buyers like restaurants and community grocery stores, which I term “direct wholesale” arrangements, offer the benefit of providing long-term, close relationships. These arrangements provide value that more than compensates for the work of establishing and maintaining these arrangements in the first place. In this context, these close-ties developed through “direct wholesale” provide the best platform for the viability of a small-scale, local farm in Eugene, Oregon.

Recent contributions highlight the importance of international knowledge transfer as a fundamental source of competitive advantage of MNCs. Due to the traditional assumption that parent firms are the prime source of knowledge, majority of studies have focused on knowledge transfer from headquarters to subsidiaries. However, the role of subsidiaries within MNCs has changed dramatically; many subsidiaries have gained a creative role by generating new resources depending on the comparative advantage of the location in which they operate, and through the process of reverse knowledge transfer, they subsequently contribute to the competence upgrading of the MNC. In reviewing the extant literature on MNC knowledge transfer and in particular reverse knowledge transfer, this research unleashes several gaps, notably in the understanding of factor affecting subsidiary knowledge development and reverse knowledge transfer within the service sector. Borrowing concepts from the knowledge-based and network views, a series of hypotheses were tested using the result of a web-based survey of the subsidiaries that were located in the UK, had a non-UK parent firm, and were active in the KIBS sector. Responses from 187 general managers, managing directors, or chief executives of subsidiaries confirm that those subsidiaries that develop and maintain business relationships with their internal (sister subsidiaries and headquarters) and external actors (customers, universities, suppliers, competitors) and have high level of autonomy are more capable of developing knowledge. With regards to determinants of reverse knowledge transfer, while subsidiary characteristics (knowledge development and willingness) and relationship characteristics (socialization mechanisms) are emerged as the main facilitators of reverse knowledge transfer, knowledge characteristics (tacitness and complexity) appeared as the main hindrances of this phenomenon. Moreover, the results indicate that, (a) socialisation mechanisms augment the extent of shared values and subsidiary-parent firm embeddedness and (b) willingness mediates the impacts of shared values and subsidiary-parent firm embeddedness on reverse knowledge transfer. The key contributions of this research are two-fold: firstly, it examines the process of reverse knowledge transfer and knowledge development exclusively within the KIBS sector. Secondly, it investigates the joint impacts of relationship characteristics, knowledge characteristics, and subsidiary (sender) characteristicson reverse knowledge transfer.

This study aims to contribute to the broad field of research regarding changes in fertility and postponement of parenthood. To accomplish this, I combine Richard Sennett’s exposition of “the new culture of capitalism” (2006 s. 126) and one of Daoud and Larsson’s (2014 s. 52) interpretations of the sociological term embeddedness. More particularly, the present study intends to investigate whether the social institutions that, in line with Sennett (2006 s. 25, 35), promote short-termism and flexibility, have come to be internalized (i.e., embedded) in the way women relate to the long-term investment of making a parental debut. The data consist of statements derived from eight semi-structured interviews with women aged between 20 and 28. The interviews executed to answer the following questions:   • How can we understand the way young Swedish women, without children, relate to committing parental debut?   • Which factors do young Swedish women, without children, emphasize regarding a possible parental debut?   Although the results were not unambiguous, there are indications that women choose, or have chosen, to postpone their parental debut due to ambivalence regarding making long-term commitments. Another result was that a possible parental debut not always is considered as a priority to other aspects. This included education and career, as well as the ability to be “free” and make self-sufficient decisions. To a certain extent, this rationale and reasoning were prevalent regardless of age and occupation, which was positive concerning the generalizability of the results. On the other hand, it was also clear that other aspects were considered important, which stresses the importance of taking the theoretical context into account.   A suggestion is that further research should enlarge the number of survey units to increase the possibility to generalize the results. Furthermore, my opinion is that prospective research should take this kind of institutional approach into account in the attempts of understanding other trends and phenomena in society.

Teacher turnover has been a problem in U.S. public schools, especially among math teachers, and is more prevalent in schools that have a majority of students from low-income families. Teacher turnover has been shown to have a negative effect on student performance. The purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental study was to investigate on-the job and off-the job embeddedness and its dimensions of links, fit, and sacrifice to determine effects on math teacher turnover intention. The theory of job embeddedness provided the framework for the study. Data were collected from 152 high school math teachers from 17 counties in a western U.S. state using the Job Embeddedness Questionnaire and a demographic survey. Findings from multiple linear regression analysis indicated statistically significant relationships between turnover intention and the sacrifice/job (on-the-job embeddedness) and turnover intention and links/community (off-the-job embeddedness). Findings may be used by administrators and policymakers to develop programs geared toward promoting math teacher retention