In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259056.pdf

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view
of trust within and between firms, in an effort to
synthesize and give insight into a fundamental
construct of organizational science. We seek to
identify the shared understandings of trust
across disciplines, while recognizing that the
divergent meanings scholars bring to the study
of trust also can add value.

Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust

Identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change, argue Johan Rockstrom and colleagues.

/pdf/a-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-tynyc6i2kf.pdf

A safe operating space for humanity

A growing number of sociologists, political scientists, economists, and organizational theorists have invoked the concept of social capital in the search for answers to a broadening range of questions being confronted in their own fields. Seeking to clarify the concept and help assess its utility for organizational theory, we synthesize the theoretical research undertaken in these various disciplines and develop a common conceptual framework that identifies the sources, benefits, risks, and contingencies of social capital.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/4134367.pdf

Social Capital: Prospects for a New Concept

This paper presents evidence that "social capital" matters for measurable economic performance, using indicators of trust and civic norms from the World Values Surveys for a sample of 29 market economies. Memberships in formal groups—Putnam's measure of social capital—is not associated with trust or with improved economic performance. We find trust and civic norms are stronger in nations with higher and more equal incomes, with institutions that restrain predatory actions of chief executives, and with better-educated and ethnically homogeneous populations.

/pdf/does-social-capital-have-an-economic-payoff-a-cross-country-495nwir3gz.pdf

Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation

Westernization vs. Modernization

: This report considers the ways policy toward the toward the Third World has been a factor in Soviet civil-military relations. It pieces together what we know about evolving Soviet military views on the Third World, and tests the hypothesis that the military as an institution was in some way an advocate of intervention after the early 1970s. The author (1) provides a brief overview of the mechanics of Soviet decisionmaking on the the Third World and of how the military fits into the picture; (2) traces the ascending curve of military interest in the Third World, beginning with the Soviet Navy's pursuit of bases in the 1960s and the development by the early 1970s of the concept of a liberating mission for the Soviet armed forces as a whole; (3) discusses the subsequent downplaying of the liberating mission under the military leadership that took over in 1976; (4) analyzes the effect of the invasion of Afghanistan on the military's view of intervention in general and on civil-military relations; and (5) provides an overview of the evolution in military thinking about the Third World. The author concludes that the Soviet military's views of the Third World are complicated and do not fit a simple pattern. The Soviet military has a point of view on Third World issues distinct from that of the political leadership.

/pdf/soviet-civil-military-relations-and-the-power-projection-ikcva7mz5o.pdf

Soviet Civil-Military Relations and the Power Projection Mission

Corruption—the appropriate of public resources for private purposes—is a modern phenomenon insofar as modern states are founded on the principle of the strict separation of public and private. This was not the case for much of human history, where “patrimonial” rulers regarded the public domain as a species of private property. Corruption needs to be distinguished from both rent-seeking and patronage/clientelism—in the first case, because many rents have perfectly legitimate uses, and in the second because clientelism involves a reciprocal exchange of favors and can be regarded as an early form of democratic participation. Moving from a patronage-based state to a modern-impersonal one is a fundamentally political act, since it involves wresting power away from entrenched elites who use their access to the state for private purposes. This is what happened during the Progressive Era in the US, and also what explains the relative success of anti-corruption bodies like Indonesia’s KPK.

Corruption as a Political Phenomenon

Western observers have raised concerns over the rise and now predominance of Chinese state-backed bilateral lending in international infrastructure development. These range from China's growing geopolitical influence to the increasingly unsustainable debt levels of some of the nations receiving investments as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In fact the BRI today is simply the next phase of a decades-long shift in the infrastructure sector towards China and away from traditional western development lending institutions. In this study we observe the scale of this trend and its root causes in China's domestic and international development policies for infrastructure and the safeguards policies of western development programs. We use aggregate reporting on infrastructure lending and project-level case studies in nations that have transitioned from western institutions to the BRI. We highlight the need for reforms for China's lending programs, to increase transparency and the financial sustainability of projects, and for western development institutions to maintain environmental and social safeguards while still achieving their stated missions. 1 Bushra Bataineh is a doctoral candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University researching international infrastructure procurement and delivery. Michael Bennon is the Managing Director of the Global Projects Center at Stanford University. Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University.

How the belt and road gained steam: causes and implications of china’s rise in global infrastructure

: As part of its research into non-NATO contingencies, the Arroyo Center has undertaken a study of the types of threats that Army planners are likely to encounter in the Third World. This study, entitled Moscow and the Future Third World Threat Environment, examines the broad changes brought about or promised by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as other aspects of Soviet policy including trends in power projection capabilities, use of proxy forces, and Soviet policy in specific regional cases. This report attempts to evaluate the impact that Gorbachev has had thus far on Soviet Third World policy, as well as prospects for future evolution. The study evaluates new Soviet thinking on foreign policy and measures the changes in rhetoric against actual Soviet behavior. It analyzes the new Soviet emphasis on the large states of the Third World; as an example of this new Soviet diplomacy it presents a detailed case study of Soviet policy toward the Persian Gulf in 1986-1987. The case study is meant to complement others in the overall project. The conclusions of this report draw not only on the source materials noted but on the findings of the other components of the project as well. (kr)

/pdf/gorbachev-and-the-new-soviet-agenda-in-the-third-world-2uok3y6tdy.pdf

Francis Fukuyama

Papers

Westernization vs. Modernization

Soviet Civil-Military Relations and the Power Projection Mission

Corruption as a Political Phenomenon

How the belt and road gained steam: causes and implications of china’s rise in global infrastructure

Gorbachev and the New Soviet Agenda in the Third World