Project description
Revealing informality’s role in changing economies
For a long time, informality has been viewed as a hindrance to economic growth. However, recent management scholarship highlights that informality can offer opportunities for marginalised populations. Despite this, there is a lack of theoretical understanding regarding the processes that generate informality, its evolution, and its impact on macroeconomic changes. With this in mind, the MSCA-funded INFORMALITY project will analyse thousands of archived case files related to entrepreneurial actors operating in Chinese flea markets during the 1970s and 1980s. The project aims to map the structure of informal networks involving both state and non-state actors, develop theories regarding the mechanisms that facilitate the creative combination of capital, labour, and knowledge, and shed light on how these actors circumvented institutional restrictions.
Objective
Although informality has long been considered a barrier to economic development, as more emerging market economies achieve growth even while remaining stubbornly informal, this assumption has become a subject of debate. Recent management scholarship has highlighted the supporting roles that informality plays in economies and the opportunities it provides for marginalized populations. Yet, because of the phenomenological and ahistorical nature of this work, the processes by which informality is produced, how it evolves over time, and how it influences macroeconomic change remain undertheorized. In this project, I attempt to address these lacunae through a novel historical approach and the analysis of unconventional sources collected from Chinese flea markets. Specifically, I apply the tools and frameworks of microhistory to analyze thousands of decommissioned case files of entrepreneurial actors who were prosecuted by Chinese state agencies in the 1970s and 1980s. Through this analysis I aim to: 1) Map the structure of informal networks of state and non-state actors and theorize the mechanisms by which they enabled the creative recombination of capital, labor, and knowledge; 2) Discover and categorize the collusive practices by which these actors pursued entrepreneurial opportunities, circumvented institutional constraints, and mitigated risk; 3) Reveal the entrepreneurial role of local administrators and theorize how their actions reshaped the context in which informal entrepreneurship operated. Through the fulfillment of these objectives, the project seeks to revise existing theories of informality by calling attention to how formal/informal boundaries were contextually and historically contingent and by revealing the bottom-up processes through which informal entrepreneurship drives change. The project also aims to generate societal and economic impact by developing applied business insights that will inform new entrepreneurial educational initiatives.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01
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2000 Frederiksberg
Denmark
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