Ian Barnes and Claire Randerson
Accession to the European Union is one of the most powerful foreign policy tools exercised within the European arena and enlargement negotiations have been a major stimulus to…
Abstract
Purpose
Accession to the European Union is one of the most powerful foreign policy tools exercised within the European arena and enlargement negotiations have been a major stimulus to reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Conditionality has evolved as over time into a dynamic instrument used to ensure that new members are sufficiently prepared to take on the responsibilities of EU membership, whilst also satisfying existing member states that new members will not prove too burdensome. This paper aims to examine some of the lessons learnt from the first stage of the Fifth Enlargement and the stricter use of conditionality mechanisms for Romania, Bulgaria and beyond.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is based on interviews with EU officials involved in the enlargement process.
Findings
The article finds that the use of conditionality in the 2004 enlargement has had a far from uniform effect on candidates and policy areas and that the commission has learnt much from this experience. The integration of Bulgaria and Romania will offer more significant challenges and conditionality has evolved as a mechanism to address these.
Originality/value
The article offersboth an empirical as well as theoretical evaluation of the use of conditionality in the context of the EU enlargement process.
Details
Keywords
Kathleen Randerson, Claire Seaman, Joshua J. Daspit and Céline Barredy
Paula Martínez-Sanchis, Cristina Aragón-Amonarriz and Cristina Iturrioz-Landart
This paper aims to explore how territory impacts on entrepreneurial families’ (EFs) embeddedness to unveil the role that territories play on the continuity and development of EFs.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how territory impacts on entrepreneurial families’ (EFs) embeddedness to unveil the role that territories play on the continuity and development of EFs.
Design/methodology/approach
To study complex contexts where subjective realities are analyzed, a constructivist qualitative approach is recommended. Given that, this paper develops a qualitative methodology in which 25 semi-structured interviews were carried out and analyzed based upon the use of ATLAS.ti, following an open-coding approach.
Findings
This paper found out that the territory can condition EFs’ embeddedness in different ways. First, through the cultural embeddedness, the shared territorial understanding of values and norms inherited by the history of the territory. Second, by the political embeddedness, i.e. the power exercised by territorial economic actors and non-market institutions. Third, through the structural embeddedness generated by the territorial social networks and the generation of close relationships and finally, through the so-called cognitive embeddedness, the territorial actors’ representations, interpretations and meanings. These four modes of territorial embeddedness are unfolded in a set of 16 territorial factors that impact on EFs’ embeddedness. Most of the identified factors, 14 out of the 16, are acting mainly over one of the embeddedness modes studied (cultural, political, structural and cognitive), while two of them, because they are operating simultaneously on various modes of embeddedness, have been considered transversal factors.
Originality/value
EFs have, to a great extent, been recognized as major generators of positive externalities in the territories in which they are located, and to date, the literature has focused on the impact that firms and family firms have on regional development. However, how the territory conditions the embeddedness of these families, especially how it impacts on the EFs’ territorial embeddedness, remains unexplored. This paper proposes a framework of 16 factors that help to understand the embeddedness dynamics between EFs and territories, serving as a starting point for future research avenues. Additionally, regional policy makers may use it as a guidance to build policy mix that considers these territorial factors to boost EFs’ embeddedness.