Page - (000024) - in Knowledge and Networks

12 them; explaining and investigating mechanisms, structures, and the development of tie formation and agency; and identifying the benefit of relational systems for regions. This section shows knowledge about the evolution of relational structure to be a key determinant of social and regional development. The third perspective presented in this volume integrates geography, connectivity and knowledge creation. The authors adopting it take space, networks, and actors to be origins of new knowledge and innovation. Those rather economic models not only help improve individual, regional, and organizational innovation but also show how the desired outcome is achievable. In short, the contributors to this volume bring together new research questions, concepts, and empirical work from economics, geography, sociology, and management science to offer new insights by combining the relational view of networks with the geographical view of locations and space with respect to knowledge and learning. Knowledge About Networks Part I, consisting of five contributions, points to the importance of knowledge about networks. This section of the volume highlights from a theoretical point of view the relational dimension as a multilevel problem mutually influenced by social, eco- nomic, individual, and geographical issues. The authors, with their research agen- das, carve out how new perspectives on those manifold relationships broaden human knowledge about relational issues surrounding the intersection of knowledge, space, and agency. In the opening chapter, “Reversing the Instrumentality of the Social for the Economic: A Critical Agenda for twenty-first-century Knowledge Networks,” Nancy Ettlinger reverses the direction of causality between the economic and the social dimensions of knowledge networks and questions the classical argument that social aspects serve economic outcomes. She develops a critical agenda for two purposes. First, she uses theories about knowledge generation, the generation of economic knowledge, and networks to develop social knowledge by dissolving fric- tions caused by difference and constructing an inclusive system of collaborative work. Second, she uses the market itself to adapt new corporate strategies to social ends in the course of sustaining, if not augmenting, productivity. The chapter thereafter elaborates on the growing importance of intercultural competence and learning in a world of rapid internationalization and globalization. The text outlines a possible solution to the following problem: When employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations are sent on foreign assignments, the ensuing clash of cultures could lead to emotional or psychological withdrawal although the business opportunity calls for social closure. Setting out from the individual’s point of view, the author, Erika Spieß, elaborates a model that takes various influential factors into account, such as the social network of expats, cultural processes, and the current economic and political environment. In a broader interpretation, this chapter can be seen as an initial empirical perspective on and solution to the agenda that Ettlinger discusses. By developing models that offer an J. Glückler et al.