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geneous knowledge can be cross-fertilized for innovation in societies through weak
friendship bridges. Furthermore, the mutual obligation inherent in friendship
enables friends to organize, disband, and reorganize in technical communities.
These dynamic combinations of relations offer possibilities for knowledge creation
and disruptive innovation. As Fukuyama (1995) put it, friends represent a spontane-
ous sociability of individuals and constitute an important kind of social capital in a
modern society:
The most useful kind of social capital is often not the ability to work under the authority of
a traditional community or group, but the capacity to form new associations and to cooper-
ate within the terms of reference they establish. (p. 27)
If the preceding theoretical constructs of family and friendship networks are cor-
rect, then the significance of family ties for business and technology learning is
likely to wane as regional or national economies upgrade, while friendship net-
works will gain momentum. This transformation is consistent with Giddens’s (1990)
view of the modernization process, in which individuals experience intimacy less
from families than from friends. The evolutionary framework of family and friend-
ship networks is supported by provocative evidence as well. Using world social
survey data, Bertrand and Schoar (2006) and Alesina and Giuliano (2013) found
strong family connections to be related to a lack of generalized trust and weak for-
mal institutions in societies. More directly, an international comparison of entrepre-
neurs’ social networks (Drakopoulou-Dodd & Patra, 2002) suggested that, in a
fairly developed economy, entrepreneurs’ social connections consist more of friends
than of families and relatives.
Although the rationale of the evolution from families to friends is clear in theory,
this transition is not easy in reality because the breakdown of family networks and
the construction of generalized trust for friends are two different processes
(Fukuyama, 1995). Family ties stable over one generation can decline quickly
across generations. Increasing geographical mobility of new generations decreases
connections among family members in traditional communities whether this effect
is desired or not. Talented young individuals may even intend to disconnect from
their families in order to avoid commitment to less able relatives (Munshi &
Rosenzweig, 2005). Members of new generations who are more mobile than those
of previous ones may also be unable to connect closely with each other or the rest
of their families because of a lack of time spent together (Li et al., 2012). The transi-
tion from family ties to ties of friendship is complicated further by the challenge of
developing generalized trust and creating autonomous associations in societies
(Portes & Landolt, 2000). Based on mutual agreement, friendship must develop
naturally. Legal systems may back up individuals’ interaction and collaboration, but
compulsory regulations cannot guarantee the creation of voluntary associations.
It takes time for individuals to reach consensus on their identities and build accepted
codes of interaction. Only after that point can spontaneous associations of friends
prosper as the main infrastructure for social learning in societies.
Developing regions usually become stuck in a transitional stage, in which local
family structure was destroyed while generalized trust in societies has not been cre-
4 Family Networks for Learning and Knowledge Creation
zurück zum
Buch Knowledge and Networks"
Knowledge and Networks
- Titel
- Knowledge and Networks
- Autoren
- Johannes Glückler
- Emmanuel Lazega
- Ingmar Hammer
- Verlag
- Springer Open
- Ort
- Cham
- Datum
- 2017
- Sprache
- deutsch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-45023-0
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 390
- Schlagwörter
- Human Geography, Innovation/Technology Management, Economic Geography, Knowledge, Discourse
- Kategorie
- Technik