Pierre Alary (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France)
E-Mail address: pierre.alary@cepremap.cnrs.fr
Market Internationalisation and Monetary Dynamics in a Very Poor Province in Northern Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic
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This paper presents an analysis of the effects of internationalisation and monetary dynamics on Phongsaly
province's socio-economic development. The findings are from a comprehensive field study conducted
from 1998 to 2000 in an environment devoid of reliable statistical information.
Phongsaly province is a backwater wedged between China and Vietnam. In 1974, when war finished, this
territory, without road communication, inhabited by a mosaic of ethnic groups had an autarkic socio-
economic organisation. This tendency became acute during the collectivisation attempt in 1975, as was also
the case at the national level. Therefore, from 1980 national leaders opted to move towards a more open
market economy.
As a result of this, and provincial dynamics (developments in infrastructure, absorptive capacity, new
regulations), local GDP increased from 30 US$ per capita in 1980 to 130 US$ per capita in 2000. Three
main driving forces emerged: Agro-forestry products exportation, foodstuff production and manufactured
goods importation. Barter began to disappear and a specific system involving foreign currency, national
money and local money evolved. These monetary changes, strongly linked with an increase in transactions,
are not uniformly propagated and are vastly influenced by the type of markets and the type of actors.
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Guilherme Azevedo/Hélène Bertrand (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
E-Mail address: prof@guilhermeazevedo.com
Global Workers and Managerial Ethnocentrism – A Discussion on Their Origins and Effects
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Based on some convergences identified on previous studies, the authors aim to discuss the correlations
between two phenomena: the advent of the so-called "global workers" and the persistence of the
"ethnocentrism" on the organizational vision.
As long as the cultural values of an organization are mainly shaped by the cultural values of the involved
social groups, the organization background stands for an historical record of its cultural construction. For
the period of an internationalization process some specific groups of workers join the cultural melting: the
entitled "global workers", which are specific groups of workers as for instance migrants, expatriates,
"brains-abroad", remote service providers, and remote manufacture producers.
On the other hand, one of the most relevant dimensions involved in the construction of a global company is
the "type of organizational vision", which is dependent on the cultural model. But, regardless of the fact
that many reasons explain why the global organization needs to develop a so-called "geocentric vision",
evidences shows that the parochialism (lack of sensibility to understand other cultural models) endures.
Discussing the convergences and contrasts of these two contemporary questions, the study identifies their
origins and infers about their future impacts on our societies.
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Tanya Basok (University of Windsor, Canada)
E-Mail address: basok@uwindsor.ca
"Migrant Food Producers and States: Ungoverned Abuse"
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Migrant workers often play a vital role in food production. Yet they frequently work and live in deplorable
conditions. Their working and living conditions are particularly substandard when migrant farm workers
are recruited by private agents or contractors. But even when the employment of migrant farm workers is
governed by bilateral agreements, migrants may still suffer abuse on the part of the growers hiring them in
part because standards set by the agreements are not enforced. Neither sending nor host country's
government have shown much interest in assuring compliance with bilateral agreements by the growers, as
examples of various guest-worker programs tend to indicate. Focusing on the working and living conditions
of government-recruited Mexican seasonal food producers in Canada, the paper will illustrate how the
virtual neglect of these producers by the Canadian state, combined with reluctance of the Mexican state to
interfere with local practices, results in the violation of the workers' rights,
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Hélène Bertrand/ Renata Buarque Goulart Coutinho (PUC-Rio, Brazil)
E-Mail address: buarque@domain.com.br
Global Business Ethics? Challenges and Paradoxes
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One of the major challenges faced by organizations at the present time is to equate the search for
competitivity with ethical and responsible business operations. The pressure brought to bear in
terms of ethical and socially responsible business practices has become even stronger, as
companies expand their operations to various parts of the world, thereby demanding coherence
relative to their activities at a global level, due to the speed with which information is distributed
throughout the market.
The objective of this article is to analyze the implications of the globalization process on business
management, in so far as it refers to ethical business conduct. This is an essay developed from an extensive
bibliographic research of literature related to business ethics, globalization and the most recent research on
ethics, from a globalization perspective. A synthesis of the problem in question was prepared and the
principal implications relative to companies that operate globally were highlighted. The discussion
indicates that global businesses should seek a kind of ethics that is also global, whereby coherence among
its worldwide operations, within a perspective of sustainability, is made possible.
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Susan Bloom (Northwestern University, USA)
E-Mail address: Susan_Bloom@csi.com
The Politics of Globalization: Democracy and Developmentalism from North and South Perspectives
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The call and response between economic and socio-political demands to the power and pervasiveness of
globalization is heard from the North and South; yet the nation-states' various replies suggest that the
specific interests and identities of each democracy strongly condition its reaction to shared economic
stimuli and caution against simply analyses of convergence. Broadly, this panel examines the tensions
among economic development, democracy, and identity. The Alcaniz and Falleti papers reveal two strong
– yet competing - movements from the South. As Alcaniz demonstrates, globalization, working to "undo"
developmentalism, has provoked Argentina and Brazil to adopt regional solutions; Falleti's work reveals
that these same pressures also have moved Argentina, Mexico, and Columbia to decentralize state
programs to local governments. From the North, Bosia and Bloom explore the negotiation of French
developmentalism and identity as globalization challenges elites and activists alike to manage change.
Bosia examines how the elite attack on Anglo-American multiculturalism attempts to marginalize critics of
economic reforms; Bloom demonstrates that this attack occurs simultaneously with the elites' own struggle
with the profits and perils of Anglo-American capitalism. In looking to the cultural and economic
challenges of globalization, these papers privilege political processes through which democracy and
development are renegotiated.
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Luigi Burroni (University of Florence, Italy)
E-Mail address: burroni@unifi.it
New Pathways in Local Governance in European Countries
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pathways of change in local governance models, which are
affecting many European countries since the beginning of the nineties. The first part of the paper will
compare recent trends in local development models in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom,
underlying the emerging of 'intermediate' forms of governance. A great variety of patterns will be found,
which cannot be well understood with the traditional ideal types of the 'varieties of capitalism' literature.
On the one hand, local governments, associations, and firms are experimenting many and new flexible
models of local regulation; some of them based on more traditional mechanisms of vertical and
authoritative regulation, whilst others are mainly based on partnership and on negotiated policies. On the
other hand, looking at firms' organization, it emerges that forms based on horizontal linkages continue to
play an important role, even if organisational architectures based on corporate external hierarchy have
clearly become increasingly important. The second part of this paper will try to reduce the above-
mentioned complexity drawing a typology of these new forms of governance and analysing the strengths
and the weaknesses of each model.
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Tulia Falleti (University of British Columbia, Canada)
E-Mail address: tulia@interchange.ubc.ca
After the Estado Desarrollista: the Politics of Decentralization in Latin America
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After the collapse of the developmental state, a wave toward decentralization of government swept
throughout Latin American countries. Both the advocates and the critics of decentralization took for
granted that this process would necessarily increase the power of subnational governments. However,
comparing the impact of decentralization reforms on the degree of autonomy of governors and mayors in
Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, I show that there are decentralization policies that do not transfer power
downwards. Moreover, I show that the impact of decentralization reforms on intergovernmental fiscal and
political institutions varies widely from one country to another. To explain these findings, I propose a
sequential theory of decentralization that has three main features. First, it introduces the preferences of
presidents, governors, and mayors toward different types and levels of decentralization. Second, it
distinguishes between the partisan and territorial interests of bargaining actors. Third, it rejects the
limitations of static theories of decentralization in favor of a dynamic account of institutional evolution.
Thus, the paper's main argument is that the degree of change in intergovernmental institutions is dependent
on the type of territorial interests that push forward the first round of decentralization and on the sequence
of these reforms. This theory and argument could be applied to other countries and regions of the world
where decentralization policies followed the collapse of the developmental state.
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Francisco Galvan Fernandez/Luis Martinez de Azagra (Universidad de La Laguna, Espana)
E-Mail address: lmartz@ull.es
Globalización, Desarrollo y Autonomía
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Desde el momento en que A. Smith define la riqueza como producción de mercancías, el crecimiento, o
incremento de la producción de mercancías, queda definido como el objetivo al que se encamina toda
política económica. Luego el concepto de desarrollo se usa para nombrar los aspectos institucionales y las
actitudes determinantes subyacentes al crecimiento económico. Resalta la multitud de usos que se le da al
termino desarrollo, confiriendole así un carácter ambiguo, al tiempo que se convierte, con el desarrollo
acelerado del sistema desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, en panacea mágica para todo objetivo de
transformación social.
El crecimiento es una propiedad especifica, definitoria, de las sociedades capitalistas. La expansión de
estas, su propio crecimiento, que fue y es resultado de la explotación internacional del trabajo, define a su
vez el no crecimiento, atraso o subdesarrollo de las sociedades dependientes. Frente a la imposición del
modelo nada pueden hacer los estudios económicos, puesto que el engranaje del poder bloquea incluso los
esfuerzos metodológicos para superar la manifiesta incapacidad teórica ante el problema social.
La crisis de la economía del desarrollo viene a coincidir con una crisis mucho más profunda, puesto que
pone en cuestión la pervivencia del "modelo" occidental.
De ahí que cualquier proposición de desarrollo social implique una transformación radical de la sociedad
mundial, el surgimiento de una nueva economía que busque la coordinación solidaria mundial de la
distribución y la transformación sobre bases no valoradas de la actividad productiva, centrando el
desarrollo en "el elemento humano, el que debe ser a la vez su agente y beneficiario", y basándolo " en la
definición autónoma que cada sociedad haga del mismo".
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Jedrzej George Frynas, Geoffrey Wood and R.M.S. Soares de Oliveira (University of Birmingham, UK)
E-mail: j.g.frynas@bham.ac.uk
Business and Politics in São Tomé e Príncipe: From Cocoa Monoculture to Petro-State
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At various historical moments, the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe (STP) have assumed major importance in the global economic system. In the sixteenth century, the islands were the world's greatest sugar producer, and in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, they were a major source of cocoa and coffee. Cocoa production has become relatively insignificant internationally. But STP could once again attain strategic and economic importance as the country's territorial waters are suspected to hold large quantities of crude oil.
In this paper we explore how STP's political economy is being transformed as a result of the country's exposure to external economic and political developments. We investigate STP's unacknowledged transformation away from domination by cocoa exports, narrating the decline and final collapse of the plantation economy on the islands and the latter's slide towards overwhelming dependence on external assistance in the form of foreign aid and external debt. In this context, we call STP an unviable state as its fledgling domestic economy fails to generate nearly enough revenue to sustain its highly import-reliant consumption patterns. But we find that STP is on the verge of another major transformation as the microstate is likely to become a crude oil producer within several years.
In the course of this research, we came across major irregularities in the conduct of the country's oil policy and some of our information appears for the first time in the public domain. In this context, this research points to opportunities for rent-seeking and corrupt behaviour, which stem from access to foreign aid and natural resources.
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Jacques Garnier (LEST, France)
E-Mail address: garnier@univ.aix.fr
Accumulation de ressources, accumulation de contraintes : comment faire évoluer un complexe
d'industries lourdes ?
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Accumulation de ressources, accumulation de contraintes : comment faire évoluer un complexe d'industries
lourdes ? La communication traite de l'évolution d'un complexe d'industries lourdes localisé dans le sud
de la France (raffinage, pétrochimie, sidérurgie, aéronautique). Il s'agit de montrer comment, au cours de
leur évolution tout au long du XXème siècle, un ensemble d'activités productives et le territoire sur lequel
il se déploie se sont réciproquement construits et spécifiés. Il s'agit d'abord de montrer comment cette
spécification réciproque a conduit à l'accumulation d'un ensemble de ressources (organisationnelles,
professionnelles, cognitives) telle que ce territoire reste attractif pour certaines industries. Il s'agit de
montrer ensuite, en contrepoint, comment cette accumulation de ressources constitue aussi et
indissociablement une accumulation de contraintes telle que le spectre des usages possibles du territoire se
trouve réduit. Ce qui est ressource étant aussi contrainte, la capacité des acteurs locaux à faire évoluer le
complexe industruel de manière innovante s'en trouve limitée. Il s'agit alors de discerner comment le
processus de globalisation incite aujourd'hui les acteurs du complexe à valoriser les ressources tout en
dépassant les contraintes.
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Jacques Garnier/ A. Lamanthe/ C. Lanciano/ D. Mercier/ F. Rychen (Laboratoire D'economie et de
Sociologie du Travail – LEST, France)
E-Mail address: lamanthe@univ-aix.fr
Local Collective Action, Specification of Skills and Training in the Renewal of Local
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This paper deals with the renewal process of four local productive fabrics in the south of France. These
areas are marked by a productive tradition that have been capitalized into a resource based knowledge and
know-how (characterized by individual skills, professional capabilities, training supply, technical
specificities, entrepreneurship) and now facing a competitiveness problem. This productive problem is
twofold. It implies a collective dynamic process that tries to concentrate, to attract and to keep economic
development forces in the local economy, but the process is over determined by global matters or by
historical lock-in that constraint the possible development paths. The local investigations allow us to study
how the local collective forces can modify the affectation of resources in the economy and what are the
determinants of the public development process that turn traditional fabric into a new one. These studies
show that the building and the capacity of specification of individual skills and training are central forces
that allow the local renewal of the local economic resources.
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Alan Hall (University of Windsor, Canada)
E-Mail address: hall4@uwindsor.ca
Organic Farming and the State in Canada
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This paper is aimed at understanding the links between the development of organic farming in Canada and
government agricultural policy. Using a regulationist perspective, the analysis focuses on the emergence of
a 'Canadian' approach to sustainable agriculture as crucial to limiting the growth of organic farming as well
as identifying variations in state responses to the agricultural crises within different provinces as providing
a foundation for some significant provincial variations. The paper also points to the limitations of the state's
influence and considers the varied roles of conventional agricultural capital, farm groups, and other
movements supporting alternative agriculture. Persistent farm environmental problems, financial and
market crises, and food safety issues are also introduced as vital to the development of organic farming.
The paper concludes by discussing the implications for organic farming, the literature on sustainable
agriculture, and future research.
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Shuwei Huang (Tunghai University, Taiwan)
E-Mail address: shuwei.huang@msa.hinet.net
Transforming into a Global city: Singapore's New Developmental Strategy
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Different from the exiting explanations about the learning capacity of East Asian countries that
emphasizing the transformation of the manufacturing sector, this paper intends to argue that the upgrading
of the IT industry in Singapore is not based on the manufacturing sector, but instead is lied on the
advancement of the knowledge of its service sector. I will argue that because of the limitation of
Singapore's education regime and economic structure in 1980s, the local private companies were too weak
to move ahead from simple manufacturing to product innovation in the IT industry by themselves, the
Singapore government and the government-linked companies therefore played the important roles to attract
TNCs as to redirect the development of the IT industry from manufacturing to the advanced producer
services. In order to do that, the Singapore government tried to invest more on the infrastructure of the
producer services in order to build Singapore as the Global City in East Asia. I use the term, the strategy of
"innovation of agglomeration", to describe this new development tendency. Finally, this paper will argue
that the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the rise of China have created tremendous challenges for the
Singapore's new strategy.
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Thomas S. Loeber, Jr. ( USA)
E-Mail address: chip@ergodicity.org
Probabilitistic Social Theory and Strategy
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I had a vision of an equation and a digraph in June of 1976 which I believe may embody the ideal social
system. I have no funding or support at the present and cannot make it to the conference without
assistance.
1. Deductive approach: collection and simulation using computer assisted serial sampling analysis and
markov chains with directed probability graphs to create an animated display of human social evolution.
2. Inductive approach: study of various aspects of general systems theory, information theory, game theory,
second-order cybernetics, and associated fields with consideration of how the new idea explains and
expands current known science.
3. Creation of peer-to-peer collaboration software programs to allow people to try the idea with web based
peer-to-peer communications using Java as at http://www.JXTA.org and possibly .NET software.
You can see more including the specific equation at http://home.pacbell.net/chipl/JustaTheory.htm
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Tai-lok Lui (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
E-Mail address: tailoklui@cuhk.edu.hk
Re-scaling Hong Kong: Hong Kong Becoming a Chinese Global City
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Despite Hong Kong's status in the mapping of world cities in the global economy, few attempts have been
made to use the case of Hong Kong to reflect upon the theoretical and analytical underpinning of the
literature on global cities and/or world cities. This paper serves the purpose of engaging in such a
discussion. I shall argue that Hong Kong's dual economic and political restructuring since the 1980s is best
understood in the light of its integration into its neighbouring region and, more importantly, the national
ambit of China. Instead of becoming more global (i.e. an intensification of the disembedding dynamics and
further integration into the global economy by loosening its attachment to the nation-state), Hong Kong's
economic development is increasingly embedded in China's national marketization project (which, in its
turn, is shaped by the forces of globalization). Hong Kong is becoming a Chinese global city. By
underlining the Chinese dimension and its pertinence, I contend that the national project is increasingly
making its impacts on Hong Kong. On the side of Hong Kong, its struggle for survival and recovery from
the recession triggered by the Asian Financial Crisis has brought it closer to China. Our analysis of Hong
Kong as a Chinese global city highlights the place-ness of the global city, which is shaped by the
interactions among the global, the local, as well as the national.
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Veronica Montecinos/John Markoff (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
E-Mail address: vxm11@psu.edu
Economists in the Americas: Convergence, Divergence and Connection
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The Asian crisis inaugurated a period of painfully disappointing economic performance in Latin America.
After five years of recession, rising poverty and unemployment, the much celebrated triumph of neoliberal
dogmas and the arrogant pronouncements of the "Washington Consensus" are being replaced by a more
tentative pluralism in economic debates. The end of unprecedented prosperity in the U.S. also has rekindled
allegedly long-resolved disputes.
Shifts in the direction of economic policies in the region have been often, but not always, prompted or
imposed by the more powerful neighbor to the north. While two decades ago markets were fast supplanting
state activism in almost every country in the Americas, half a century earlier, it was the centrality of
markets that was being curtailed by the adoption of economic planning. Are we about to witness yet
another drastic policy swing, this time towards novel attempts to domesticate market forces, even is
skipping the heavy-handed interventionism of the past?
The pendulum-like history of economic ideas in the Western Hemisphere both reflects and propels
realignments of economic and political actors within and across borders. This paper will analyze the rich
history of mutual influences and parallel debates on economic ideas and policies in the Americas. It is
argued that, contrary to those who still believe in the unshakable hegemony of market-based models, the
present moment prefigures a transition that has been long in the making. By looking simultaneously at the
history of those processes in the U.S. and Latin America, we expect to uncover the direction of future
changes.
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Sandrina Berthault Moreira (Escola Superior de Ciencias Empresariais, Portugal)
E-Mail address: smoreira@esce.ips.pt
Evaluate the Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth - A Case Study (1970-1998)
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Many studies have tried to assess the effectiveness of aid at the micro- and macro-level. One branch of that
literature attempts to measure the contribution of foreign aid to the growth of developing countries. The
micro results are clear and encouraging – foreign aid is beneficial to economic growth. However, the macro
results are inconclusive – the impact of foreign aid on growth may be positive, negative, or even, null. This
puzzle was known as the 'micro-macro paradox'. According to my research, I believe that methodological
and econometric weaknesses may justify the misleading macro results. To overcome some of these
problems, I use popular econometric tools and the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator on
simple augmentations of cross-country growth specifications. Examining a large sample of developing
countries covering a 29-year period, I find a positive impact of foreign aid on growth. Therefore, I think
that the 'micro-macro paradox' should be undervalued. In terms of magnitude, I also find that the
immediate effect of aid on growth is lower than its long run effect. I conclude, as well, that the time lags in
the aid-growth relationship should not be ignored.
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Lynne Phillips and Suzan Ilcan (University of Windsor, Canada)
E-Mail address: lynnep@uwindsor.ca/silcan@uwindsor.ca
"Feeding the Neoliberal World"
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The global expansion of neoliberal economics is expressed today in myriad ways, ranging from trade
liberalization and privatization, to new and revitalized knowledge used to produce various forms of wealth
and security. Under neoliberal globalization, or what we prefer to call neoliberal governance, a host of
practices and events continue to be organized in and through market relations at a hitherto unimaginable
rate such that problems once presumed to be social and political are increasingly viewed as market
opportunities for the future that 'trickle down' to all. While this form of governance grants legitimacy to
practices that enable and direct the flow of transaction-consumption relationships, it also holds profound
implications for how we view and act in the world, and how our ties to events are opened up to uncertainty
and risk. This paper explores how a global emphasis on food security fares in this context. We consider
this issue in light of the policies and programs of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a UN
agency that has had considerable responsibility for globally managing food and agriculture. Through the
use of archival and contemporary documents on food security, we examine the extent to which the FAO
manifests itself as a neoliberal agent actively involved in publicizing its image as a 'good' corporate citizen
in the provision of security and in promoting a rights-based approach to food security. We argue that the
FAO mediates the new relationships of food producers and consumers to the liberalizing market, plays a
crucial role in producing neoliberal food, and builds neoliberal communities while minimizing those that
threaten them.
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Markus Pohlmann (ISO Saarbruecken, Germany)
E-Mail address: markus.pohlmann@5-online.de
Restructuring Tigers – A New Phase of Development in South Korea?
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The economies and the societies of the Asian Tigers are still in a transitional phase. Their further
development is hard to predict. Especially in the case of South Korea, a strong development state with a
special mode of regulation is in transformation. At the same time, the further economic rise of South Korea
is at stake. With a new generation of economic elites, the restructuring of the big business groups and the
labor systems, a new phase of economic development seems to begin. The modes of corporate governance
seem to change dramatically after the economic crisis in 1997. But will the changes be sustainable? Will
they lead to a new set of societal and economical institutions that helps South Korea's economy to survive
in a new phase of global competition? And, last but not least: Is the "pacific geese-pattern" still at work?
Becoming a mature capitalist economy in Asia, does it still mean to follow the "pacemaker" Japan? The
session tries to deal with these questions and to discuss, how South Koreas path of development did change
and what the consequences of these changes are.
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Naren Prasad (Université de Paris II Panthéon Assas, France)
E-Mail address: n.prasad@unescobkk.org
Manipulating Economic Rules
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My paper will explore why certain small island countries have succeeded in achieving higher
levels of economic development compared to other developing countries. Small islands do not
generally have many options for development. The author proposes a typology of development
policies and strategies adopted by small island countries by using five case studies (Mauritius,
Barbados, Fiji, Antigua & Barbuda, Samoa). It is found that development strategies focusing on
service industries or exports of light manufactures yield higher levels of development (as
measured not only by economic growth but also by GDP per capita, HDI, levels of poverty and
income distribution), compared to that of commercial agriculture. Most small islands also depend
heavily on external financial flows such as remittances, but measuring its contribution to
economic development poses problems in relation to the gross domestic product. This paper
concludes that the development strategies pursued by small islands are at the margins of free trade
rules or of the dominant economic theories.
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Julia Resnik (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
E-Mail address: juliares@mscc.huji.ac.il
The role of intergovernmental organizations in the promotion of the education-economic development "black-box"
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Education became a "state affair", since it has been defined as an investment and as the first and foremost
condition of economic growth. The adoption of the conception that links the state's economy to population'
education level by intergovernmental organizations contributed to the diffusion of this conception through
the world.
After WWII and on the base of human capital theory (Theodore Schultz) a new domain of research
developed: economy of education. Economists of education, such as Denison, Svennilson, Elvin, Harbison,
Tinbergen et Bos elaborated models that enabled to quantify the relationship between economic
development and the population's level of education. Through concepts of "economy of human resources"
or "residual factor" and econometric calculations these researchers pretended to have established
estimations allowing precise formulation of education policies. In spite of much criticism against this
"econometric" economy of education in the 1950s, a decade later the link between economy and education
became indestructible: the "education-economic growth" black box was born. The massive adoption of the
black box by intergovernmental organizations (UNESCO, OECD) entailed major consequences: 1.
proliferation of activities in the education sections of the organizations 2. expansion of education all over
the world 3. global standardization of education.
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Nathalia Rogers (Dowling College, USA)
E-Mail address: nathrogers@aol.com
Trust and the Uses of Social Capital in a Transitional Economy: Analyzing the Risks of Venture Start-Up in Russia
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In this paper I will examine some aspects of the emergence of new ventures in Russia. My analysis deals
with the issues of use of different forms of capital by the new entrepreneurs. Although I will consider the
use of human and financial capital, the main focus of the paper will be on the empirical aspects of the use
of social capital by capital owners in Russia. I will discuss different patterns of transition to private
enterprise ownership by individuals with varied amounts of social, human and financial capital and offer
models of venture start-up risks based on the evidence collected in Russia.
On the macrolevel, I will argue that the stage of the society's economic and political development and the
aspects of society's institutional and socio-cultural past affects the type of social interaction in which
entrepreneurs engage when they are starting their ventures. In addition, I will consider microlevel aspects
of socio-economic circumstances that the entrepreneurs find themselves in when they are about to start
their ventures, and analyze how such circumstances as education, past employment, prior position within
the industry, and the lack or presence of organizational and/or personal social capital mediate the risks of
starting a new venture. My focus will be on small and medium-sized business owners from Russia.
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Sean Safford (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
E-Mail address: ssafford@mit.edu
Universities and Regional Economic Development: Forms of Engagement in the U.S., U.K., Finland and Japan
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This symposium will present research from a collaborative project involving researchers from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the University of Tampere (Finland), Helsinki University of
Technology (Finland), the University of Cambridge (UK) and Tokyo University (Japan).
The Local Innovation Systems project is addressing the question of how local economic communities
survive and prosper in a rapidly changing global economy. The policy debate on local innovation-led
development has been dominated by a few outstandingly successful centers of technological
entrepreneurship, notably Silicon Valley, Boston's Route 128 and Cambridge in the U.K. However, these
locales are exceptions; most places do not have clusters of high technology ventures of such scale. Nor are
they home to research and educational institutions with world-class strengths across a broad range of
disciplines. Many places, on the other hand, do have distinctive industrial capabilities and vibrant higher
education institutions and some of these locales have been quite successful in harnessing new technologies
to revitalize their economies or even to reinvent themselves as centers of innovation and competitive
advantage.
The researchers are currently completing the initial phase of a multi-year research agenda. In this first
phase, our focus has been on investigating the roles of universities and other public research institutions as
creators, receptors, and interpreters of innovation; as a source of human capital; and as key components of
social infrastructure and social capital.
Sean Safford will present research on the role universities have played in the divergent transformations of
three "rust belt" communities in the United States: Akron, Ohio; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Rochester,
New York. Communities were chosen based on similarities in the structure of their local innovation
systems in the period of before the "competitiveness crisis" of the late 1970s and early 1980s—a period
that marked the end of the Fordist industrial paradigm in the U.S. In the years since then, the communities
have taken different paths in reintegrating themselves into the global economy. The research emphasis on
the role of local research universities have played in this divergence.
Carlos Martínez-Vela will present research comparing innovation-led development efforts in
Helsinki/Tampere in Finland and the Interstate-85 corridor between North and South Carolina in the United
States. One finds concentrations of innovation in industries related to mechanical engineering in both
regions. The discussion will focus on how different local capabilities and institutions have co-evolved with
the kinds of activities that firms concentrate in each location. It will emphasize the diverse forms of
engagement between firms and local institutions, particularly universities and other knowledge-related
infrastructure.
Sachi Hatakenaka will present research on local innovation systems in Hamamatsu, Japan, with some
preliminary findings from another region, to portray the dynamic evolution taking place in Japan amidst a
decade of economic stagnation. Hamamatsu is another heavily industrialized region that was a hallmark of
Japanese manufacturing success in the 1980s. As its traditional industries began to wane faced with
escalating global competition, Hamamatsu refocused its attention on optoelectronics as a potential new
industry to replace the old ones. While the story of Hamamatsu is yet to be complete, the patterns of
interactions among firms and other related actors do provide insight on key processes that could help push
multiple companies in a given locale. The research focuses on this process of industrial emergence where
local firms small and large struggle to establish unique knowledge bases to compete at local, national and
international levels, with emphasis on the role of universities.
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Nana Sumbadze and George Tarkhan-Mouravi (Institute for Policy Studies, Georgia)
E-Mail address: nana@ips.ge / gia@ips.ge
Emergence of the New Community in Georgia and Its Social Impact
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Societal patterns and institutions in Georgia have changed dramatically. In order to understand the role and
the essence of community in Georgia, taking into account of both post-Soviet and Caucasian contexts is
important, as they jointly determine its specific character here, which is mostly covering normative aspects
of everyday life, rather than coordination of collective efforts or shared responsibilities.
Socio-economic transition in Georgia exposed local developments to profound institutional
transformations, bringing basic survival strategies and subsistence economy to the front. Community
development paths here still are qualitatively different from Western analogues, even if international actors
often ignore these particularities. Due to market forces and some deliberate efforts western-type community
emerges, leading to mixture and adaptation - either traditional community acquires new roles and
responsibilities, or new type of community emerges and transforms.
Traditional communities played important role in cushioning the implications of recent economic crisis.
Emerging communities have also increasing impact on development of the civil society. At the same time,
existing communitarian patterns may also create favourable ground for clientelism and protectionism, as
obligations toward kin are often placed before responsibilities to the state and the society at large.
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Shann Turnbull (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia)
E-Mail address: sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu
Internally financed Economic Development
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This paper considers how appropriately designed financial institutions can allow economic development to
become internally self-financing while improving the management of the currency and the economy. The
business concept of self-financing, not found in leading economic text books, is described. Related novel
concepts are introduced to explain how economic development or underdevelopment arises. The need for
maintaining a balance is identified between the formation of wealth generating and wealth consuming
activities, or earning and spending foreign exchange. Selective monetary policies are proposed to balance
self-financing development and to establish a market for loan insurance for self-financing wealth creating
projects. Markets forces in loan insurance premiums then allocate new credits for projects that increase
output with the value of the currency protected from project failure by loan insurance outside the banking
sector. Such selective policies provide a more precise and flexible policy instrument than relying only on
interest rates in advanced or developing economies. The paper recommends that institutions like the World
Bank change their role from distributing credit to distributing the technology of self-financing
development.
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Nikolai Zoubanov (Central European University, Hungary)
E-Mail address: c01zon01@student.ceu.hu, n_zubanov@yahoo.com
An Essay on the "Rights" and "Wrongs" in Perceptions of International Migration in the EU
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I highlight the controversies in political and academic debates over the issue of migration from the new
member countries after the EU eastern enlargement. The material for this essay includes both the real case
study of media reports on emigration of young Bulgarians, and extensive literature analysis.
Two major points are made: 1) these controversies reflect a discord in political-economic interests between
the public, the big business, and the EU governing bodies on different levels, which the current institutional
structure of the EU is hardly able to accommodate; 2) the policy regarding after-enlargement migration
should not restrict freedom of movement, but rule out opportunistic, welfare-driven migration. The
underlying principles of this policy are: home country-based granting of social welfare benefits and
harmonization of labour markets and social welfare systems in the core EU and the new member countries.
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