Geography of institutional change. A comparative analysis of family firm succession in Baden-Württemberg and the Basque Country

社会机构日益被认为是经济发展的重要因素。然而，各地区的制度各不相同，所谓的“好制度”很难模仿或传播到其他地方。因此，制度研究和经济地理学都面临着理解社会制度的产生和变迁的挑战。这种内在的过程性可以在变化的情况下进行最好的研究，这就是为什么本研究建议集中在家族企业的企业继承。企业继承的情况，越来越多地对整个欧洲的区域嵌入式家族企业的长期连续性构成挑战，既是分析的单位，也是公司间互动的体制变革的触发器。因此，这一建议追求两个目标：第一，解释不同的形式和企业继承的过程，作为区域具体的制度差异的影响，第二，资格的制度变迁机制后，企业继承。虽然解释区域具体的制度效应需要比较分析，明确的过程分析是必要的资格的制度变迁机制。因此，研究设计包括巴登-符滕贝格和西班牙巴斯克地区之间的区域比较，这两个高度成功和创新的地区的特点是（中小型）家族企业。本研究将采用以继任者为中心、同时考虑前任、员工和相关企业的三年定性小组研究方法，对制度变迁机制进行明确的过程分析。这一建议的总目标是促进体制变革的地理分布，并增进我们对不同区域发展的理解，以减少监管（政策）与企业行为之间的差异。

Social institutions have increasingly become recognized as important factors of economic development. However, institutions vary across regions, and allegedly "good institutions" are hard to imitate or transmit to other locations. For this reason, both institutional research and economic geography face the challenge of understanding the generation and transformation of social institutions. This inherent processuality can best be studied in situations of change, which is why this research proposal focuses on enterprise succession in family firms. The situation of enterprise succession, increasingly posing a challenge to the long-term continuity of regionally embedded family businesses all over Europe, serves as both the unit of analysis and the trigger of institutional change in inter-firm interactions. Consequently, this proposal pursues two objectives: First, explaining different forms and courses of enterprise succession as effects of regionally specific institutional differences and second, the qualification of the mechanisms of institutional change posterior to an enterprise succession. Whereas the explanation of regionally specific institutional effects requires a comparative analysis, an explicit process analysis is needed for qualifying the mechanisms of institutional change. Hence, the research design includes a regional comparison between Baden-Württemberg and the Spanish Basque Country, two highly successful and innovative regions characterized by (small and medium-sized) family businesses. By adopting a qualitative panel approach over a period of three years focusing on successors, but also taking into account predecessors, employees and related companies, this research proposal will use explicit process analysis for the qualification of mechanisms of institutional change. The general objective of this proposal is to contribute to a geography of institutional change, and to improve our understanding of differential regional development in order to reduce discrepancies between regulation (policy) and the behaviour of enterprises.