Review of The Architecture of Markets An Economic Sociology of.docVIP

Review of The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies by Neil Fligstein Ruth V. Aguilera College of Commerce and Business Administration and Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 339 Wohlers Hall 1206 South Sixth Street Champaign, IL 61820 Tel. 217-333-6661 Fax. 217-244-7969 E-mail: ruth-agu@uiuc.edu Aguilera, R. V. (2002) “The Architecture of Markets. An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies” by N. Fligstein. Academy of Management Review, 27(2): 304-306. The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies by Neil Fligstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Reviewed by Ruth V. Aguilera, Department of Business Administration and Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Champaign, IL 61820. Recent research by economic sociologists on markets in capitalist societies is rich in both description and use of sophisticated quantitative analysis. However, despite a number of programmatic statements about how markets are socially constructed, and a plethora of findings demonstrating inconsistencies in pure efficiency-based accounts, economic sociology has so far failed to develop a strong theoretical framework that challenges the dominant economic perspectives in this realm. In his book The Architecture of Markets, Fligstein proposes a sociological theoretical alternative to economic accounts of markets in capitalist societies, which he labels the “political-cultural approach.” The book reads like a theoretical battle of economic accounts, mostly agency theory, against his sociological account, where the latter wins. Fligsteins approach is firmly rooted in the social relations tradition of economic sociology, with actors in society-governments, entrepreneurs, firms, managers and workers-operating not in a vacuum, b