The way in which bounded rationality enters contemporary organizational economics theorizing is examined. It is argued that, as it is being used, bounded rationality is neither necessary nor sufficient for producing the results of organizational economics. It is at best a rhetorical device, used...

We discuss and empirically examine a firm-level equivalent of the ancient problem of "tying the King<92>s hands", namely how to maximize managerial intervention for "good cause", while avoiding intervention for "bad cause". Managers may opportunistically intervene when such intervention produces...</92>

The recent decade has witnessed a strong expansion of work on the firm, both from a capabilities perspective and from a contractual perspective. These two bodies of theories are often thought to be fundamentally different, because their domains of applications are different...

This paper develops a property rights perspective on the nature of the firm. The basic idea is that learning by doing in production and coordination stem from experience in production and that user rights over productive assets are necessary in order to accumulate the experience needed to...

In this paper the two canonical theories of the firm - transaction costs economics and the knowledge-based view of the firm - predictions on 'make-or-buy' are tested on the news industry. The news industry provides an interesting case on which to test the two theories since it is characterized...

Firms do not exist because of the cost of using the price mechanism, but because they enable actions to be carried out concurrently in conformity with a particular design. This concurrent coordination, which production requires, is distinct from the evolutionary coordination, which is the...

The paper begins by providing a brief overview and discussion of the modern economics of organization, concentrating in particular on the work of incomplete contract theorists. I then turn to a discussion of Loasby’s view of the firm and incomplete contracts. The point here is that while...

We discuss the relations between alternative conceptualizations of the market process - neoclassical, Austrian and radical subjectivist/evolutionary - and alternative approaches to economic organization, for example, nexus of contract theory, Williamsonian transaction cost economics and the...

The arguably dominant approaches to the study of interfirm relations are the capabilities and organizational economics perspectives. This paper discusses their merits and weaknesses, concentrating on the capabilities perspective, which is argued to rest on rather weak foundations, particularly...

The paper deals with the policies for an idealized transition of a National System of Innovation (NSI) from a system reflecting a relatively closed industrializing economy to an NSI which reflects the conditions of a well-developed "Information Society" and "Learning Economy". The analysis of...