Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness is a research paper published in American Journal of Sociology (1985). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 1.5. It has been cited 28,005 times.
How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclasical accounts provide an undersocialized or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under-and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument in illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson's markets and hierarchies research program.
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Base Score Contribution
1.5
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
0
Citation network not refreshed for this result
This paper's DataRank is currently driven only by its base citation score. Citation network data was not refreshed for this result.
Learn more about DataRank methodology →DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 100% comes from its base citations and 0% from the citation network.
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.