Embeddedness as a multilevel problem: A case study in economic sociology

Economic sociology has established the interdependencies between economic and social structures using the notion of embeddedness of the former in the latter. However research usually studies inter-organizational commercial networks and inter-individual informal networks separately. In this article we use a multilevel framework to analyze jointly economic networks between firms and informal networks between their members in order to reframe this embeddedness hypothesis. Based on a network study of a trade fair for television programmes in Eastern Europe we show that while each level has its own specific processes they are partly nested. Beyond this result, we observe that these levels of agency emerge in different contexts and in different temporalities. To conclude, we show that in order to understand performance on a market one needs to look at this dual positioning of individuals and organizations. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.