Multiplex Hypothesis Multilevel Co ntext Hypothesis Multilevel Network Hypothesis Contractual Hypothesis : Social exc han ge : Economic exchange : Orga nizatio

Economic sociology has established the interdependencies between economic and social structures using the notion of embeddedness of the former in the latter. However research usually studies interorganizational commercial networks and inter-individual informal networks separately. In this article we use a multilevel framework to analyze jointly economic networks between firms and informal networks RGM between their members in order to reframe this embeddedness hypothesis. Based on a network study of a trade fair for television programmes in Eastern Europe we show that while each level has its own specific processes they are partly nested. Beyond this result, we observe that these levels of agency emerge in different contexts and in different temporalities. To conclude, we show that in order to understand performance on a market one needs to look at this dual positioning of individuals and organizations. Globalized markets require long distance partnerships between ompanies, “global pipelines” as Bathelt and Schuldt (2008) call hem. But what kind of relationships represent these partnerhips? Behind each partnership between companies there are lways inter-individual ties (Gulati, 1995). If a partnership between wo organizations necessitates inter-individual collaboration at the eginning of a contracting process between companies, the more a artnership is repeated between two companies, the more it breaks way from the inter-individual relationship to become an interoranizational tie that does not need specific acquaintances between ts members (Lorenz, 1999). In order to understand how internaional ties are created between companies one should study the oordination and the complex interdependencies between these wo kinds of actors and these two levels of actions: individuals and rganizations. Granovetter’s (1985) article on embeddedness is famous for sserting at a high level of generality that economic phenomna take place in social structures and are shaped by social Please cite this article in press as: Julien, B. , et al., Embeddedness as Netw. (2015), http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.socnet. 2015.03. 005 etworks. Individuals do not act as atoms in social life, their ehaviour is not entirely defined by macro-structures, and their ctions depend on a relational context. In the area of economic ∗ Corresponding author at: Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences ociales (IRISSO) Université Paris-Dauphine, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tasigny, 75016 Paris, France. Tel. : +33 677474837. E-mail address: j.brailly@cso.cnrs. fr (B. Julien). ttp://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.socnet. 2015.03. 005 378-8733/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. sociology, research has exposed the importance of social networks in markets, indicating the relevance of relational structures for the emergence of economic activities (for state of the art syntheses, see for example Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992; Brass et al., 2004). Many have also questioned the value of such a general notion of embeddedness of economic activities in social structures (for example Burt, 1992; Swedberg, 1997; Lazega, 1996, 2001) in order to go beyond a mechanistic interaction between these kinds of relationships. Depending on the level of analysis, two approaches can be distinguished. One focuses on interorganizational networks, showing, for example, that companies are embedded in a web of commercial relationships but also of alliances and business partnerships that affect their performance, success or chances of survival (Powell, 1996; Powell et al., 2005; Uzzi, 1996, 1997). Another approach studies informal relationships such as friendship, advice, information exchange or collaboration between entrepreneurs at the inter-individual level (Krackhardt, 1994; Ingram and Roberts, 2000; Lazega and Mounier, 2002). Such approaches intend to reveal informal social structures to underline the role of social resources and social capital in economic activities. In most handbooks in economic sociology or social network analysis (for example, Smelser and Swedberg, 2010; Knoke, 2013; Scott and Carrington, 2011), inter-organizational and intera multilevel problem: A case study in economic sociology. Soc. individual networks are treated separately as if they were focusing on different topics. This separation is due to the fact that much of existing research in that area focuses only on one level of analysis at a time.