Collaborative Networks of Small Business Owners in Singapore

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Parties and Networks

Abstract

Small businesses provide a means for individuals with limited resources to earn a living and they contribute toward the versatility of urban economies, but these businesses typically have a short life cycle. Therefore, to compete and survive, business owners rely on numerous sources of support such as their personal networks while governments also offer support through policies and programs. We examine the interaction between the government and very small businesses. There are two competing schools of thought: synergy and crowding-out. The crowding-out hypothesis claims that support from the government displaces private networks, while the synergy thesis claims that the role of the government stimulates private support. This study focuses on the conditions under which these phenomena occur by examining the linkages between the government (macro), grassroots (meso) and personal networks (micro). This study finds that business owners might participate in trade institutions that the government uses to implement policies and offer industry-level seminars; likewise, the government gets feedback about challenges on the ground. However, most of the business owners in this study spurned these groups as contemporarily irrelevant. Instead, they formed a substitute (private) network consisting of business-to-business (B2B) ties to survive and grow. Viewed as a systemic whole, these B2B linkages seem to cohere into an institutional force that can be located in the meso-sphere, complementing and in some ways substituting the trade associations. We explore the emergence and role of this conglomerate, and how it serves as a channel of synergistic relations with the government.

Author

• Nazish Zafar, Johns Hopkins University