This paper addresses a puzzle related to firm size and competition. Since Stephen Hymer´s pioneering contribution (Hymer, 1960/1976), theories of the firm implicitly assume that only large, diversified multinational enterprises can compete in industries that combine high capital intensity, high...

This study makes use of the results of a postal questionnaire sent to a sample of large private sector companies in Britain and France to address two key issues in the new institutional analysis of the firm. The first is the way the institutional environment supports and constrains the design of...

This paper focuses on three related matters. It analyses the process of competition in the software industry, this being important both in itself and for the light it throws on competition within all industries characterised by low or zero marginal costs and a high rate of technical development....

The paper aims at investigating how far transaction costs economics (TCE) concurs in the explanation of outsourcing decisions in firms characterized by “thick’ industrial relations, that is where unions and employees are involved in, and are sometimes able to affect, the relative managerial...

It has been demonstrated that users occasionally innovate. However, it can now be observed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a firm, and “its” consumers - from the computer games industry - illustrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has...

This paper presents a lexical definition of firms' flexibility and its operationalization as used in the DISKO survey of 1900 Danish private firms. This operationalization is highlighted by data from a highly flexible firm which was visited in 1997 as part of a follow-up upon the questionnaire...