Personal networks, in contrast to organizational relations, have recently increased their significance to firms by allowing them to acquire external knowledge and strengthen their innovation capacity. Hot debates on the geography and innovation effects of personal networks persist, but these discussions are mainly derived from research works on western economies. Since personal interactions are context-sensitive, this paper examines the geography and the innovation effects of personal networks on biomedical firms in Guangzhou, which has a unique political and socioeconomic context owing to the transitional nature of China. This case study indicates that the geographic nature of personal knowledge networks is largely locally-based, and the primary driver of such networks is experience-based practices, such as repeated face-to-face contacts, labor mobility, and shared life experience. Personal knowledge networks contribute to both problem-solving and radical innovation for firms as a result of the guanxi-based relations in China that transform personal networks into channels for mobilizing innovation-related resources. Moreover, by dividing personal networks into bonding, bridging, and linking networks, this paper also de-homogenizes personal networks and delineates specific and differentiated innovation effects of manifold social relationships. Based on the research findings, policy implications aiming at laying the social ground of innovation are addressed.
Against the background of globalisation and state rescaling, promoting decentralisation and enhancing local governance capacity have become prioritised objectives of transnational city-to-city partnerships mainly between developed and developing countries. However, considering the critical debates on Global East’s uniqueness, two questions emerge when studying the transnational partnerships of Chinese cities. (1) Are Chinese cities’ partnership establishments and objectives remarkably different from the existing international body of knowledge? (2) In China, whether decentralisation and local governance are promoted by city-to-city transnational partnerships as well? To cope with the questions, this paper examines 28 Chinese world cities’ partnership establishments and objectives and reaches two conclusions. (1) With the objective of economic development, Chinese cities have consistently maintained strong connections with cities in both the developed and developing countries. (2) Chinese cities’ transnational partnerships do not observably promote decentralisation, and China’s political decentralisation is much more unstable than its economic decentralisation. Overall, both the binary partnership establishments and the dual-track decentralisation in political and economic aspects are highly embedded in China’s interstitial and transitional position as a Global East country.
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