Organizational Invention in Renaissance Florence

John Padgett, University of Chicago

This paper focuses on evolutions in Florentine social networks and organizations that were similarly innovative for their time and influential for the future as those associated with the word “Renaissance,” but that have been less studied. In particular, I document and explain evolutionary change over time during the late-medieval/early-Renaissance period in Florentine economic networks, in Florentine kinship networks, and in Florentine political networks, and on developmental interactions and spillovers among these three organizational domains. In particular, in Florentine economic networks, I focus on the rise and collapse of the diversified partnership-system form of business organization. In Florentine kinship networks, I focus on the formation of urban patrilineage and its diffusion from upper classes to middle classes. And in Florentine political networks, I focus on the factional transformation of oligarchic elites. Causal interactions and spillovers among these three social networks, I argue, shaped organizational evolution in each of these social networks, thereby creating a linked multiple-network architecture which coevolved through time.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 29. Conceptualizing Institutional Stabilization