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Relational Compensation In Entrepreneurial NetworksJensen, Kent W.; Philipsen, KristianBusiness & Entrepreneurial NetworksEntrepreneurship, Relational Embeddedness, Interorganizational Networks, Resource NetworksWED.PM2This study examines the importance of network access to resources for new firm survival. It focuses on how new firms with comparably poor network access attheir gestation will compensate by developing access to resources through alternative relationships. New firms differ in their access to resources that arevaluable and relevant. During the start‐up process, the initial resource‐based is continually modified as some resources are consumed or discarded and newresources are acquired and integrated in the existing resource base. Accordingly, new firms rely not only on the resources initially at their control by the timeof their founding, but also on their ability to negotiate favorable terms for the exchange of valuable resources during their formation. We examine thenetworks of supported spin‐offs, non‐supported spin‐offs and independent ventures as these kinds of firms vary in terms of their access to relevant resourcesand in particularly those from a parent company. In a study of 139 three year old firms, we found differences in the value that the three kinds of firmsattributed to their network with regard to the acquisition of managerial and organizational resources, but not with regard to technological and marketresources. Further, we found systematic differences in terms of the sources utilized to attain different kinds of resources. Together, these findings suggeststhat non‐supported spin‐offs and independent ventures that have survived their first three years have been capable of compensating for their initial lack ofaccess to relevant resources from parent companies by developing alternative relationships.Relational Components In The Formation Of Electoral PoliticsLiepelt, KlausPolicy NetworksCommunication Networks, Political NetworksSAT.AM2Electoral research has a persistent tradition of analyzing the Voter’s Choice by probing into personal behavior. We do not follow the mainstream assumptionthat, for understanding the formation of electoral publics, the individual elector should be the crucial unit of analysis. Neither should he or she be given creditas a major source of information in tracing the relevant assembly lines in the dockyards of partisan identity‐building. We propose alternate ways to monitorthe coupling and decoupling among initially loose and widely self organized collectivities that shape up while Election Day approaches. Not individual citizens,but emergent electoral components act and interact with changing acquired weights, contributing in non‐linear modes to the pressures that forge a multitudeof intentions into a limited array of alternate collectivities (“Electorates”), until the game is called, and the body politic delivers. The outcome of these widelyself‐organized processes has produced the special mix of the new body politic. It can best be traced from collective behavior marks, which the big event has leftall over the political landscape. Our measurable units are numerous small‐scale intra‐party movements derived from grass roots facial contacts. By comparinglocal voting data of the 2009 German Elections with preceding results, we get a database of grass roots flows in a multi‐party matrix. The analysis of such datawill be guided by Harrison White's theory.