Between commitment and strategizing: Practicing flexibility in organizing principles

By studying the various ways in which firms use their inter-organizational production ties to foster their flexibility, this study contributes to the sociology of economic action, the sociology of markets, and the sociology of trust. Recognizing that firms' flexibility-oriented inter-organizational ties are both scenes of risk-sharing and risk-shedding, we highlight the complex maneuvers performed by firms as they try to build collaborative ties with each other, while they also test the extent to which they should be committed to the collaboration. Examining the uncertain world of Hungarian contractors, we portray their practices in which they recombine incongruous organizing principles. In addition to emphasizing the importance of recombinant practices, we also argue for their situated nature. A central thesis of this dissertation is that not all firms respond to the problem of uncertainty by performing practices characterized by flexibility in organizing principles. Through an exploratory analysis of the inter-organizational production ties of a wide variety of contractors in Hungary, this dissertation constructs a number of hypotheses about firms that are the most likely to perform practices in which they recombine incongruous organizing principles. We build hypotheses by comparing the practices of contractors which are located in the same town but participate in different markets, and we contrast the behavior of the same kinds of contractors in dissimilar economic environments. In constructing these hypotheses, we build on, and extend the results of the sociology of markets, and the sociology of trust. We emphasize that markets are social structures, and examine the competitive dynamics of several different market formations. We argue that economic actors form different beliefs about each other's behavior in dissimilar market structures. We contend that these beliefs shape the flexibility-oriented practices of actors in the different contexts. We also claim that firms' internal production organization influences their ability to perform certain kinds of flexible practices.