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

社会制度越来越被认为是经济发展的重要因素。然而，不同地区的机构各不相同，所谓的“好机构”很难模仿或传播到其他地方。正因为如此，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。这种内在的过程最适合在变化的情况下研究，这就是为什么本研究方案聚焦于家族企业的企业继任。企业继承的情况对整个欧洲地区根深蒂固的家族企业的长期连续性提出了越来越大的挑战，既是分析的单位，也是公司间互动中制度变化的触发因素。因此，这一建议追求两个目标：第一，解释企业继任的不同形式和过程是区域特定制度差异的影响；第二，解释企业继任后的制度变迁机制的资格。虽然解释特定区域的制度影响需要进行比较分析，但需要进行明确的过程分析，以确定制度变化的机制。因此，研究设计包括巴登-符腾堡州和西班牙巴斯克地区的区域比较，这两个非常成功和创新的地区以(中小型)家族企业为特征。通过采用以继任者为重点的三年定性面板方法，但也考虑到前任、员工和相关公司，本研究方案将使用明确的过程分析对制度变迁机制的资格进行鉴定。这项建议的总体目标是有助于了解机构变化的地理位置，并提高我们对区域发展差异的理解，以减少法规(政策)和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.