This lightweight, yet scientific, paper explores the four ways a firm can growth increasing reach, breadth, depth, and value. It builds on the traditions of Penrose, Williamson, Teece, and Grossman and Hart, and others who explored vertical and lateral integration. The scientific underpinning is...

This article presents--in a liberal arts format--the reason why firms exist, what we know about economies and diseconomies of scale, and how mergers and acquisitions contribute to society. It builds on the theoretical and empirical findings in the author's doctoral dissertation quot;Bureaucratic...

This thesis tests Oliver Williamson's proposition that transaction cost economics can explain the limits of firm size. Williamson suggests that diseconomies of scale are manifested through four interrelated factors: atmospheric consequences due to specialisation, bureaucratic insularity,...

Finding, measuring and capturing market opportunities in emerging countries are critical tasks for multinational consumer goods companies. Central to these tasks is the need to collect and analyze income distribution data within a globally coherent framework and to move beyond income metrics...

This article tests Oliver Williamson's proposition that transaction cost economics can explain the limits of firm size. Williamson suggests that diseconomies of scale are manifested through four interrelated factors: atmospheric consequences due to specialization, bureaucratic insularity,...

This two-part article explores why management consultants and why they organize in independent firms. The intellectual foundation is transaction cost economics. Part 1 summarizes the history of management consulting and reviews the literature. Part 2 applies TCE to management consulting to...

The goal of this paper is to to take the most important contributions to strategy science since the late 1950s and integrate them into coherent perspective.It brings together the ideas of Profs. Joe Bain, Michael Porter, Birger Wernerfelt, and Roger Martin. It then overlays these micro-economic...

Finding, measuring and capturing market opportunities in emerging countries are critical tasks for multinational con- sumer goods companies. Central to these tasks is the need to collect and analyze income distribution data within a globally coherent framework and to move beyond income metrics...