ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the impact of two alternative models of business relations on their ability to face international competition. It deals with conceptual and theoretical contributions of Max Weber's and Georg Simmel's bearing on the models. Weber and Simmel have maintained, in contrast with Ferdinand Toennies, that market exchanges may take an institutional character, and be acknowledged as public interest. The book focuses on financial communities, and on some leading stock exchanges in particular, that may be described as closely related to one or other of two ideal types, and argues that this relationship may be causally linked to their differential development. Two ideal types, or models, of market communities may be constructed, and social and economic consequences of approximating to one ideal type or the other are spelled out by some literature that focuses on single firms or on organizational populations.
