用中文总结以下论文内容，要求1000字以上：As a concrete application of the embeddedness approach to economic life,
I offer a critique of the influential argument of Oliver Williamson in
Markets and Hierarchies (1975) and later articles (1979, 198 1; Williamson
and Ouchi 1981). Williamson asked under what circumstances economic
functions are performed within the boundaries of hierarchical firms
rather than by market processes that cross these boundaries. His answer,
consistent with the general emphasis of the new institutional economics,
is that the organizational form observed in any situation is that which
deals most efficiently with the cost of economic transactions. Those that
are uncertain in outcome, recur frequently, and require substantial
"transaction-specific investmentsn-for example, money, time, or energy
that cannot be easily transferred to interaction with others on different
matters-are more likely to take place within hierarchically organized
firms. Those that are straightforward, nonrepetitive, and require no
transaction-specific investment-such as the one-time purchase of standard equipment-will more likely take place between firms, that is,
across a market interface.
American Journal of Sociology
In this account, the former set of transactions is internalized within
hierarchies for two reasons. The first is "bounded rationality," the inability of economic actors to anticipate properly the complex chain of contingencies that might be relevant to long-term contracts. When transactions
are internalized, it is unnecessary to anticipate all such contingencies;
they can be handled within the firm's "governance structure" instead of
leading to complex negotiations. The second reason is "opportunism," the
rational pursuit by economic actors of their own advantage, with all
means at their command, including guile and deceit. Opportunism is
mitigated and constrained by authority relations and by the greater
identification with transaction partners that one allegedly has when both
are contained within one corporate entity than when they face one another across the chasm of a market boundary.
The appeal to authority relations in order to tame opportunism constitutes a rediscovery of Hobbesian analysis, though confined here to the
economic sphere. The Hobbesian flavor of Williamson's argument is suggested by such statements as the following: "Internal organization is not
beset with the same kinds of difficulties that autonomous contracting
[among independent firms] experiences when disputes arise between the
parties. Although interfirm disputes are often settled out of court . . . this
resolution is sometimes difficult and interfirm'relations are often strained.
Costly litigation is sometimes unavoidable. Internal organization, by contrast . . . is able to settle many such disputes by appeal to fiat-an
enormously efficient way to settle instrumental differences" (1975, p. 30).
He notes that complex, recurring transactions require long-term relations
between identified individuals but that opportunism jeopardizes these
relations. The adaptations to changing market circumstances required
over the course of a relationship are too complex and unpredictable to be
encompassed in some initial contact, and promises of good faith are unenforceable in the absence of an overarching authority:
A general clause . . . that "I will behave responsibly rather than seek
individual advantage when an occasion to adapt arises," would, in the
absence of opportunism, suffice. Given, however, the unenforceability of
general clauses and the proclivity of human agents to make false and misleading (self-disbelieved) statements, . . . both buyer and seller are strategically situated to bargain over the disposition of any incremental gain
whenever a proposal to adapt is made by the other party. . . . Efficient
adaptations which would otherwise be made thus result in costly haggling
or even go unmentioned, lest the gains be dissipated by costly subgoal
pursuit. Governance structures which attenuate opportunism and otherwise
infuse confidence are evidently needed. [1979, pp. 241-42, emphasis mine]
This analysis entails the same mixture of under- and oversocialized
assumptions found in Leviathan. The efficacy of hierarchical power
within the firm is overplayed, as with Hobbes's oversocialized sovereign
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state.' The "market" resembles Hobbes's state of nature. It is the
atomized and anonymous market of classical political economy, minus
the discipline brought by fully competitive conditions-an undersocialized conception that neglects the role of social relations among individuals in different firms in bringing order to economic life. Williamson
does acknowledge that this picture of the market is not always appropriate: "Norms of trustworthy behavior sometimes extend to markets and
are enforced, in some degree, by group pressures. . . . Repeated personal
contacts across organizational boundaries support some minimum level of
courtesy and consideration between the parties. . . . In addition, expectations of repeat business discourage efforts to seek a narrow advantage in
any particular transaction. . . . Individual aggressiveness is curbed by the
prospect of ostracism among peers, in both trade and social circumstances. The reputation of a firm for fairness is also a business asset not to
be dissipated" (1975, pp. 106-8).
A wedge is opened here for analysis of social structural influences on
market behavior. But Williamson treats these examples as exceptions and
also fails to appreciate the extent to which the dyadic relations he describes are themselves embedded in broader systems of social relations. I
argue that the anonymous market of neoclassical models is virtually
nonexistent in economic life and that transactions of all kinds are rife with
the social connections described. This is not necessarily more the case in
transactions between firms than within-it seems plausible, on the contrary, that the network of social relations within the firm might be more
dense and long-lasting on the average than that existing between-but all
I need show here is that there is sufficient social overlay in economic
transactions across firms (in the "market," to use the term as in Williamson's dichotomy) to render dubious the assertion that complex market
transactions approximate a Hobbesian state of nature that can only be
resolved by internalization within a hierarchical structure.
In a general way, there is evidence all around us of the extent to which
business relations are mixed up with social ones. The trade associations
deplored by Adam Smith remain of great importance. It is well known
that many firms, small and large, are linked by interlocking directorates
so that relationships among directors of firms are many and densely knit.
That business relations spill over into sociability and vice versa, espeWilliamson's confidence in the efficacy of hierarchy leads him, in discussing Chester
Barnard's "zone of indifferencen-that realm within which employees obey orders
simply because they are indifferent about whether or not they do what is ordered-to
speak instead of a "zone of acceptance" (1975, p. 77), thus undercutting Barnard's
emphasis on the problematic nature of obedience. This transformation of Barnard's
usage appears to have originated with Herbert Simon, who does not justify it, noting
only that he "prefer[s] the term 'acceptance' " (Simon 1957, p. 12).
American Journal of Sociology
cially among business elites, is one of the best-documented facts in the
sociological study of business (e.g., Domhoff 1971; Useem 1979). In his
study of the extent to which litigation was used to settle disputes between
firms, Macaulay notes that disputes are "frequently settled without reference to the contract or potential or actual legal sanctions. There is a
hesitancy to speak of legal rights or to threaten to sue in these negotiations. . . . Or as one businessman put it, 'You can settle any dispute if you
keep the lawyers and accountants out of it. They just do not understand
the give-and-take needed in business.' . . . Law suits for breach of contract appear to be rare" (1963, p. 61). He goes on to explain that the
top executives of the two firms may know each other. They may sit together
on government or trade committees. They may know each other socially
and even belong to the same country club. . . . Even where agreement can
be reached at the negotiation stage, carefully planned arrangements may
create undesirable exchange relationships between business units. Some
businessmen object that in such a carefully worked out relationship one gets
performance only to the letter of the contract. Such planning indicates a
lack of trust and blunts the demands of friendship, turning a cooperative
venture into an antagonistic horse trade. . . . Threatening to turn matters
over to an attorney may cost no more money than postage or a telephone
call; yet few are so skilled in making such a threat that it will not cost some
deterioration of the relationship between the firms. [Pp. 63-64]
It is not only at top levels that firms are connected by networks of
personal relations, but at all levels where transactions must take place. It
is, for example, a commonplace in the literature on industrial purchasing
that buying and selling relationships rarely approximate the spot-market
model of classical theory. One source indicates that the "evidence consistently suggests that it takes some kind of 'shock' to jolt the organizational
buying out of a pattern of placing repeat orders with a favored supplier or
to extend the constrained set of feasible suppliers. A moment's reflection
will suggest several reasons for this behavior, including the costs associated with searching for new suppliers and establishing new relationships,
the fact that users are likely to prefer sources, the relatively low risk
involved in dealing with known vendors, and the likelihood that the
buyer has established personal relationships that he values with representatives of the supplying firm" (Webster and Wind 1972, p. 15).
In a similar vein, Macaulay notes that salesmen "often know purchasing agents well. The same two individuals may have dealt with each
other from five to 25 years. Each has something to give the other. Salesmen have gossip about competitors, shortages and price increases to give
purchasing agents who treat them well" (1963, p. 63). Sellers who do not
satisfy their customers "become the subject of discussion in the gossip
exchanged by purchasing agents and salesmen, at meetings of purchasing
agents' associations and trade associations or even at country clubs or
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social gatherings . . ." (p. 64). Settlement of disputes is eased by this
embeddedness of business in social relations: "Even where the parties
have a detailed and carefully planned agreement which indicates what is
to happen if, say, the seller fails to deliver on time, often they will never
refer to the agreement but will negotiate a solution when the problem
arises as if there never had been any original contract. One purchasing
agent expressed a common business attitude when he said, 'If something
comes up, you get the other man on the telephone and deal with the
problem. You don't read legalistic contract clauses at each other if you
ever want to do business again. One doesn't run to lawyers if he wants to
stay in business because one must behave decently'" (Macaulay 1963, p.
61).
Such patterns may be more easily noted in other countries, where they
are supposedly explained by "cultural" peculiarities. Thus, one journalist
recently asserted,
Friendships and longstanding personal connections affect business connections everywhere. But that seems to be especially true in Japan. . . . The
after-hours sessions in the bars and nightclubs are where the vital personal
contacts are established and nurtured slowly. Once these ties are set, they
are not easily undone. . . . The resulting tight-knit nature of Japanese
business society has long been a source of frustration to foreign companies
trying to sell products in Japan. . . . Chalmers Johnson, a professor at . . .
Berkeley, believes that. . . the exclusive dealing within the Japanese industrial groups, buying and selling to and from each other based on decadesold relationships rather than economic competitiveness . . . is . . . a real
nontariff barrier [to trade between the United States and Japan]. [Lohr
19821
The extensive use of subcontracting in many industries also presents
opportunities for sustained relationships among firms that are not organized hierarchically within one corporate unit. For example, Eccles cites
evidence from many countries that in construction, when projects "are
not subject to institutional regulations which require competitive bidding
. . . relations between the general contractor and his subcontractors are
stable and continuous over fairly long periods of time and only infrequently established through competitive bidding. This type of 'quasiintegration' results in what I call the 'quasifirm.' It is a preferred mode to
either pure market transactions or formal vertical integration" (1981, pp.
339-40). Eccles describes this "quasifirm" arrangement of extensive and
long-term relationships among contractors and subcontractors as an organizational form logically intermediate between the pure market and the
vertically integrated firm. I would argue, however, that it is not empirically intermediate, since the former situation is so rare. The case of
construction is closer to vertical integration than some other situations
where firms interact, such as buying and selling relations, since subcon-
American Journal of Sociology
tractors are physically located on the same site as the contractor and are
under his general supervision. Furthermore, under the usual fixed-price
contracts, there are "obvious incentives for shirking performance requirements" (Eccles 1981, p. 340).
Yet a hierarchical structure associated with the vertically integrated
firm does not arise to meet this "problem." I argue this is because the
long-term relations of contractors and subcontractors, as well as the embeddedness of those relations in a community of construction personnel,
generate standards of expected behavior that not only obviate the need
for but are superior to pure authority relations in discouraging malfeasance. Eccles's own empirical study of residential construction in Massachusetts shows not only that subcontracting relationships are long term in
nature but also that it is very rare for a general contractor to employ more
than two or three subcontractors in a given trade, whatever number of
projects is handled in the course of a year (1981, pp. 349-51). This is true
despite the availability of large numbers of alternative subcontractors.
This phenomenon can be explained in part in investment terms-through
a "continuing association both parties can benefit from the somewhat
idiosyncratic investment of learning to work together" (Eccles 1981, p.
340)-but also must be related to the desire of individuals to derive
pleasure from the social interaction that accompanies their daily work, a
pleasure that would be considerably blunted by spot-market procedures
requiring entirely new and strange work partners each day. As in other
parts of economic life, the overlay of social relations on what may begin in
purely economic transactions plays a crucial role.
Some comments on labor markets are also relevant here. One advantage that Williamson asserts for hierarchically structured firms over market transactions is the ability to transmit accurate information about
employees. "The principal impediment to effective interfirm experiencerating," he argues, "is one of communication. By comparison with the
firm, markets lack a rich and common rating language. The language
problem is particularly severe where the judgments to be made are highly
subjective. The advantages of hierarchy in these circumstances are especially great if those persons who are most familiar with a worker's characteristics, usually his immediate supervisor, also do the experience-rating"
(1975, p. 78). But the notion that good information about the characteristics of an employee can be transmitted only within firms and not between
can be sustained only by neglecting the widely variegated social network
of interaction that spans firms. Information about employees travels
among firms not only because personal relations exist between those in
each firm who do business with each other but also, as I have shown in
detail (Granovetter 1974), because the relatively high levels of interfirm
mobility in the United States guarantee that many workers will be reason-
Embeddedness
ably well known to employees of numerous other firms that might require
and solicit their services. Furthermore, the idea that internal information
is necessarily accurate and acted on dispassionately by promotion procedures keyed to it seems naive. To say, as Williamson does, that reliance
"on internal promotion has affirmative incentive properties because
workers can anticipate that differential talent and degrees of
cooperativeness will be rewarded" (1975, p. 78) invokes an ideal type of
promotion as reward-for-achievement that can readily be shown to have
only limited correspondence to existing internal labor markets (see
Granovetter 1983, pp. 40-5 1, for an extended analysis).
The other side of my critique is to argue that Williamson vastly overestimates the efficacy of hierarchical power ("fiat," in his terminology)
within organizations. He asserts, for example, that internal organizations
have a great auditing advantage: "An external auditor is typically constrained to review written records. . . . An internal auditor, by contrast,
has greater freedom of action. . . . Whereas an internal auditor is not a
partisan but regards himself and is regarded by others in mainly instrumental terms, the external auditor is associated with the 'other side' and
his motives are regarded suspiciously. The degree of cooperation received
by the auditor from the audited party varies accordingly. The external
auditor can expect to receive only perfunctory cooperation" (1975, pp.
29-30). The literature on intrafirm audits is sparse, but one thorough
account is that of Dalton, in Men Who Manage, for a large chemical
plant. Audits of parts by the central office were supposed to be conducted
on a surprise basis, but warning was typically surreptitiously given. The
high level of cooperation shown in these internal audits is suggested by
the following account: "Notice that a count of parts was to begin provoked a flurry among the executives to hide certain parts and equipment
. . . materials not to be counted were moved to: 1) little-known and
inaccessible spots; 2) basements and pits that were dirty and therefore
unlikely to be examined; 3) departments that had already been inspected
and that could be approached circuitously while the counters were en
route between official storage areas and 4) places where materials and
supplies might be used as a camouflage for parts. . . . As the practice
developed, cooperation among the [department] chiefs to use each other's
storage areas and available pits became well organized and smoothly
functioning" (Dalton 1959, pp. 48-49).
Dalton's work shows brilliantly that cost accounting of all kinds is a
highly arbitrary and therefore easily politicized process rather than a
technical procedure decided on grounds of efficiency. He details this especially for the relationship between the maintenance department and various production departments in the chemical plant; the department to
which maintenance work was charged had less to do with any strict time
American Journal of Sociology
accounting than with the relative political and social standing of department executives in their relation to maintenance personnel. Furthermore,
the more aggressive department heads expedited their maintenance work
"by the use of friendships, by bullying and implied threats. As all the
heads had the same formal rank, one could say that an inverse relation
existed between a given officer's personal influence and his volume of
uncompleted repairs" (1959, p. 34). Questioned about how such practices
could escape the attention of auditors, one informant told Dalton, "If
Auditing got to snooping around, what the hell could they find out? And
if they did find anything, they'd know a damn sight better than to say
anything about it. . . . All those guys [department heads] have got lines
through Cost Accounting. That's a lot of bunk about Auditing being
independent" (p. 32).
Accounts as detailed and perceptive as Dalton's are sadly lacking for a
representative sample of firms and so are open to the argument that they
are exceptional. But similar points can be made for the problem of transfer pricing-the determination of prices for products traded between
divisions of a single firm. Here Williamson argues that though the trading
divisions "may have profit-center standing, this is apt to be exercised in a
restrained way. . . . Cost-plus pricing rules, and variants thereof, preclude supplier divisions from seeking the monopolistic prices [to] which
their sole source supply position might otherwise entitle them. In addition, the managements of the trading divisions are more susceptible to
appeals for cooperation" (1975, p. 29). But in an intensive empirical study
of transfer-pricing practices, Eccles, having interviewed nearly 150 managers in 13 companies, concluded that no cost-based methods could be
carried out in a technically neutral way, since there is "no universal
criterion for what is cost. . . . Problems often exist with cost-based
methods when the buying division does not have access to the information by which the costs are generated. . . . Market prices are especially
difficult to determine when internal purchasing is mandated and no external purchases are made of the intermediate good. . . . There is no obvious
answer to what is a markup for profit . . ." (1982, p. 21). The political
element in transfer-pricing conflicts strongly affects whose definition of
"cost" is accepted: "In general, when transfer pricing practices are seen to
enhance one's power and status they will be viewed favorably. When they
do not, a countless number of strategic and other sound business reasons
will be found to argue for their inadequacy" (1982, p. 2 1; see also Eccles
1983, esp. pp. 26-32). Eccles notes the "somewhat ironic fact that many
managers consider internal transactions to be more difficult than external
ones, even though vertical integration is pursued for presumed advantages" (1983, p. 28).
Thus, the oversocialized view that orders within a hierarchy elicit easy
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obedience and that employees internalize the interests of the firm, suppressing any conflict with their own, cannot stand scrutiny against these
empirical studies (or, for that matter, against the experience of many of us
in actual organizations). Note further that, as shown especially well in
Dalton's detailed ethnographic study, resistance to the encroachment of
organizational interests on personal or divisional ones requires an extensive network of coalitions. From the viewpoint of management, these
coalitions represent malfeasance generated by teams; it could not be
managed at all by atomized individuals. Indeed, Dalton asserted that the
level of cooperation achieved by divisional chiefs in evading central audits involved joint action "of a kind rarely, if ever, shown in carrying on
official activities . . ." (1959, p. 49).
In addition, the generally lower turnover of personnel characteristic of
large hierarchical firms, with their well-defined internal labor markets
and elaborate promotion ladders, may make such cooperative evasion
more likely. When many employees have long tenures, the conditions are
met for a dense and stable network of relations, shared understandings,
and political coalitions to be constructed. (See Homans 1950, 1974, for
the relevant social psychological discussions; and Pfeffer 1983, for a treatment of the "demography of organizations.") James Lincoln notes, in this
connection, that in the ideal-typical Weberian bureaucracy, organizations
are "designed to function independently of the collective actions which
can be mobilized through [internal] interpersonal networks. Bureaucracy
prescribes fixed relationships among positions through which incumbents
flow, without, in theory, affecting organizational operations" (1982, p.
26). He goes on to summarize studies showing, however, that "when
turnover is low, relations take on additional contents of an expressive and
personal sort which may ultimately transform the network and change
the directions of the organization" (p. 26).
To this point I have argued that social relations between firms are more
important, and authority within firms less so, in bringing order to economic life than is supposed in the markets and hierarchies line of thought.
A balanced and symmetrical argument requires attention to power in
"market" relations and social connections within firms. Attention to
power relations is needed lest my emphasis on the smoothing role of social
relations in the market lead me to neglect the role of these relations in the
conduct of conflict. Conflict is an obvious reality, ranging from wellpublicized litigation between firms to the occasional cases of "cutthroat
competition" gleefully reported by the business press. Since the effective
exercise of power between firms will prevent bloody public battles, we
can assume that such battles represent only a small proportion of actual
conflicts of interest. Conflicts probably become public only when the two
sides are fairly equally matched; recall that this rough equality was pre-
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cisely one of Hobbes's arguments for a probable "war of all against all" in
the "state of nature." But when the power position of one firm is obviously dominant, the other is apt to capitulate early so as to cut its losses.
Such capitulation may require not even explicit confrontation but only a
clear understanding of what the other side requires (as in the recent
Marxist literature on "hegemony" in business life; see, e.g., Mintz and
Schwartz 1985).
Though the exact extent to which firms dominate other firms can be
debated, the voluminous literature on interlocking directorates, on the
role of financial institutions vis-&-vis industrial corporations, and on dual
economy surely provides enough evidence to conclude that power relations cannot be neglected. This provides still another reason to doubt that
the complexities that arise when formally equal agents negotiate with one
another can be resolved only by the subsumption of all parties under a
single hierarchy; in fact, many of these complexities are resolved by implicit or explicit power relations among firms.
Finally, a brief comment is in order on the webs of social relations that
are well known from industrial and organizational sociology to be important within firms. The distinction between the "formal" and the "informal" organization of the firm is one of the oldest in the literature, and it
hardly needs repeating that observers who assume firms to be structured
in fact by the official organization chart are sociological babes in the
woods. The connection of this to the present discussion is that insofar as
internalization within firms does result in a better handling of complex
and idiosyncratic transactions, it is by no means apparent that hierarchical organization is the best explanation. It may be, instead, that the effect
of internalization is to provide a focus (see Feld 1981)for an even denser
web of social relations than had occurred between previously independent market entities. Perhaps this web of interaction is mainly what
explains the level of efficiency, be it high or low, of the new organizational form.
It is now useful to summarize the differences in explanation and prediction between Williamson's markets and hierarchies approach and the
embeddedness view offered here. Williamson explains the inhibition of
"opportunism" or malfeasance in economic life and the general existence
of cooperation and order by the subsumption of complex economic activity in hierarchically integrated firms. The empirical evidence that I cite
shows, rather, that even with complex transactions, a high level of order
can often be found in the "marketH-that is, across firm boundaries-and
a correspondingly high level of disorder within the firm. Whether these
occur, instead of what Williamson expects, depends on the nature of
personal relations and networks of relations between and within firms. I
claim that both order and disorder, honesty and malfeasance have more
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to do with structures of such relations than they do with organizational
form.
Certain implications follow for the conditions under which one may
expect to see vertical integration rather than transactions between firms
in a market. Other things being equal, for example, we should expect
pressures toward vertical integration in a market where transacting firms
lack a network of personal relations that connects them or where such a
network eventuates in conflict, disorder, opportunism, or malfeasance.
On the other hand, where a stable network of relations mediates complex
transactions and generates standards of behavior between firms, such
pressures should be absent.
I use the word "pressures" rather than predict that vertical integration
will always follow the pattern described in order to avoid the functionalism implicit in Williamson's assumption that whatever organizational form is most efficient will be the one observed. Before we can make
this assumption, two further conditions must be satisfied: (i) well-defined
and powerful selection pressures toward efficiency must be operating,
and (ii) some actors must have the ability and resources to "solve" the
efficiency problem by constructing a vertically integrated firm.
The selection pressures that guarantee efficient organization of transactions are nowhere clearly described by Williamson. As in much of the
new institutional economics, the need to make such matters explicit is
obviated by an implicit Darwinian argument that efficient solutions,
however they may originate, have a staying power akin to that enforced
by natural selection in the biological world. Thus it is granted that not all
business executives "accurately perceive their business opportunities and
faultlessly respond. Over time, however, those [vertical] integration
moves that have better rationality properties (in transaction cost and
scale-economy terms) tend to have better survival properties" (Williamson and Ouchi 1981, p. 389; see also Williamson 1981, pp. 5 73-74). But
Darwinian arguments, invoked in this cavalier fashion, careen toward a
Panglossian view of whatever institution is analyzed. The operation of
alleged selection pressures is here neither an object of study nor even a
falsifiable proposition but rather an article of faith.
Even if one could document selection pressures that made survival of
certain organizational forms more likely, it would remain to show how
such forms could be implemented. To treat them implicitly as mutations,
by analogy to biological evolution, merely evades the issue. As in other
functionalist explanations, it cannot be automatically assumed that the
solution to some problem is feasible. Among the resources required to
implement vertical integration might be some measure of market power,
access to capital through retained earnings or capital markets, and appropriate connections to legal or regulatory authorities.
American Journal of Sociology
Where selection pressures are weak (especially likely in the imperfect
markets claimed by Williamson to produce vertical integration) and resources problematic, the social-structural configurations that I have outlined are still related to the efficiency of transaction costs, but no guarantee can be given that an efficient solution will occur. Motives for
integration unrelated to efficiency, such as personal aggrandizement of
CEOs in acquiring firms, may in such settings become important.
What the viewpoint proposed here requires is that future research on
the markets-hierarchies question pay careful and systematic attention to
the actual patterns of personal relations by which economic transactions
are carried out. Such attention will not only better sort out the motives for
vertical integration but also make it easier to comprehend the various
complex intermediate forms between idealized atomized markets and
completely integrated firms, such as the quasi firm discussed above for
the construction industry. Intermediate forms of this kind are so intimately bound up with networks of personal relations that any perspective
that considers these relations peripheral will fail to see clearly what "organizational form" has been effected. Existing empirical studies of industrial organization pay little attention to patterns of relations, in part
because relevant data are harder to find than those on technology and
market structure but also because the dominant economic framework
remains one of atomized actors, so personal relations are perceived as
frictional in effect.