| Summary: | This paper discuss a methodology to analyse industrial relationships based on social network analysis and on the concepts of embeddedness (Granovetter, 1973), productive system (Wilkinson, 1985) and social capital. Once the perspective is discussed it is applied to study industrial relationships in the Basque Country (Spain).The application of the social network analysis to economic research is at the moment at its initial stages, although it has been widely applied in sociology and psychology. The dominance of the neoclassical mainstream paradigm in economics, based on principles and developing theories that do not consider as relevant the social and relational character of agents and systems, is among the main reasons. However, all the perspectives, even the neoclassical, assume that economics is a social science.In this paper relationships are the focus of the analysis and they are considered for a particular productive system, geographically and historically specified. The concept of productive system is understood by considering mercantile and non-mercantile relationships among the firms constituting a particular industrial sector. Moreover, relationships are linking firms, and economic sectors at a more macro level, with other types of institutions such as technology parks, research institutes and universities. At the same time, informal relationships among actors should also be included, together with the formal links, to analyse a complete productive system. The whole relational structure is analysed considering its context, and therefore allowing for the consideration of geographical, historical and social peculiarities, that are necessary for a better understanding of its characteristics.
|
|---|
