ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the broad parameters of the model are developed and the mounting criticism. It identifies three variants of the embeddedness model: a developed country model; a developing country model; and Transnational Corporation embeddedness model. The chapter reviews H. Yeung's proposed research agenda on enterprise embeddedness and extended to build on these processes of inclusion and exclusion and also to question the local growth potential fostered by local institutions. It discusses a critique of the increasingly prominent enterprise embeddedness model of local economic growth. The chapter assesses the adequacy and appropriateness of the model as an appreciation of the social and economic mechanisms involved in local growth. In the developing country context the focus is on the creation of 'social capital' and the creation of seemingly appropriate non-economic and non-political institutions as the underpinnings of successful economic growth. To build local development policies on the embeddedness model as it is currently formulated is, it can be concluded, problematic.
