ABSTRACT
As the editors of this volume note in their introduction, collaboration is inherent in any operating market economy, and collaboration is sought because of the advantages it yields relative to non-collaboration. At the most abstract level, ‘collaboration’ simply means ‘non-autarchic’; thus, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1936) saw the division of labour, as organized under capitalist institutions, as a primary example of peaceful collaboration. Less abstractly, collaborative advantage may be related to notions of social capital and generalised trust. Such understandings capture a very large part of extant social science research. A more narrow understanding of collaborative advantage is required, lest we merely engage in an unproductive relabeling game. In fact, starting with important contributions by, for example, Hirschman (1970) and Richardson (1972), modern writers associate collaborative advantage with (typically) long-lasting and stable relations between actors, supported by informal trust relations, relations based on formal contracts or property rights, or some combination thereof (Lazzarini, Miller and Zenger, 2004). The relevant actors may exist at different analytical levels (for example, individuals, firms, dyads, industries, clusters, regions, nations), and may in turn be embedded in various formal and informal institutions (North, 1990), as well as in certain geographical contexts.
