"In fact, this discussion of embeddedness is much older in the historical than in the organizational and economics context. It goes back to the ‘Bücher-Meyer controversy’ (the modernists versus the primitivists) concerning the ancient economy [31,32,33]. It was taken up again by scholars such as Polanyi [34], Humphreys [35] and Finley [36] who argued that the ancient economy was embedded in the social, political and cultural context and so was primitive, a thesis that has been refuted by more recent studies concerning the economy, [31,37-45] who argue that the ancient Greek economy, and particularly that of Athens, functioned much like the economies and markets of today"
"References [48,49] developed the theory of bounded rationality, which states that the mind has limitations, for example in its capacity to absorb and use new information. We are not totally ‘rational’ in the sense of seeking to maximize utility or any other ‘ideal’. What we actually do in real life is try to reach a solution that satisfies us even if it is not the best possible one. We may even ignore the best possible one that would maximize utility. Simon [48,49] calls this behaviour ‘satisficing’ (deriving from the words satisfy and efficient). Satisficing enables us to find acceptable solutions with minimal expenditure of time and effort, thus reducing transaction costs (as e.g. information costs). Such a behaviour has further consequences: once we have found solutions to a particular problem that are perceived as adequate, when facing a new problem we try to use the established and known rules of the thumb, the known knowledge we possess, in order to solve the new problem. Figure 1 shows the dynamic structural change from one (old) macro-culture (leading to an economic and political change in the long term) to a different (new) macro-culture. The continuous line of om in Figure 1 shows the path that old macro-culture would follow, in case it was still remained."
"The model in Figure 1 can be described by two simple equations [50]:
m=om+nm∗egt∗t (1)
Where m: the macroculture
om: old macroculture, which is the constant
nm: new macroculture, establishing over time if gt is positive.
gt: the rate of change depending on the creation of new elements of macroculture and their speed of diffusion (adaptation by other sectors).
A further elaboration could be made using (2).
gt =f(k,d) (2)
where:
k: knowledge
d: rate of diffusion (of the macro-culture effect)
