Market as a Multilevel System

Abstract

Globalized markets require long distance partnerships between companies, "global pipelines" as Bathelt and Schuldt (2008) call them. But what kind of relationships do these partnerships represent? Behind each partnership between companies there are always inter-individual ties (Gulati 1995). If a partnership between two organizations necessitates inter-individual collaboration at the beginning of a contracting process between companies, the more a partnership is repeated between two companies, the more it breaks away from the inter-individual relationship to become an inter-organizational tie that does not need specific acquaintances between its members (Lorenz 1999). In order to understand how international ties are created between companies one should study the coordination and the complex interdependencies between these two kinds of actors and these two levels of actions: individuals and organizations. Granovetter's (1985) article on embeddedness is famous for asserting at a high level of generality that economic phenomena take place in social structures and are shaped by social networks. Individuals do not act as atoms socially, their behaviour is not entirely defined by macro-structures, and their actions depend on a relational context. In the area of economic sociology, research has exposed the importance of social networks in markets, indicating the relevance of relational