Grabher Gernot (Hrsg.): Restructuring Networks in Post-Socialism

This book is about change in Central and Eastern Europe, and how we think about social and economic change, more generally. In contrast to the dominant 'transition framework' that examines organizational forms in Eastern Europe according to the degree to which they conform to, or depart from, the blueprints of already existing capitalisms, this book examines the innovative character, born of necessity, in which actors in the post-socialist setting are restructuring organizations and institutions by redefining and recombining resources. Instead of conceiving these recombination as accidental aberrations, it explores their evolutionary potentials. The starting premise of Restructuring Networks is that the actual unit of entrepreneurship is not the isolated individual personality but the social networks that links firms and the actors within them. Drawing insight from evolutionary economics and from the new methods of network analysis, leading sociologists economists and political scientists present their findings from Hungary, Poland, Eastern Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic.The book is an important contribution to the fast-growing field of transitional studies. It features some of the most exciting theoretical thinking currently employed in economics, sociology and political science. - Dmitri n. Shalin. - Social Forces - June 1998