As emphasized by Barney (1986), any explanation of superior profitability must account for why the resources supporting such profitability could have been acquired for a price below their rent generating capacity. Building upon the literature in economics on coordination failures and incomplete...

The capability-based view of the firm is based on the assumption that firms know how to do things. Assuming the existence of a thing called `organizational knowledge', in the first part of the paper we identify its main building blocks and we provide a description of its inner structure. This...

This paper builds upon a view of economic system and individual economic organization as problem-solving arrangements and presents a simple model of adaptive problem-solving driven by trial-and-error and collective selection. The institutional structure, and in particular its degree of...

This paper offers a sketch of what an economic theory of the firm would look like if it were founded on the thought of Joseph Schumpeter, particularly on Chapters 1-2 of his Theory of Economic Development. Schumpeterian analysis requires an intuitively appealing and realistic conceptualization...

A debate around the book by Denis Segrestin ("Les chantiers du manager", Paris, Colin, 2004) gives an opportunity to hope for deeper and rigorous anaytical frameworks about organizational theories of firms. Two perspectives are suggested: firms as collective action systems open to their...

Including real options in firms ’ value raises numerous difficulties. Limitations concerning the relevance of option pricing models outside financial markets are the most salient, but carrying out a valuation implies other assumptions, especially on firms’ governance. In particular,...

The article discusses the origins of the U-shaped average cost curve, which is one of the most widely used tools in microeconomic analysis. Its widespread use leads many to consider it as a basic tool, obscuring the fact that the graph of the U-shaped average cost curve is part of a complex...

A principal needs a worker for the production of a good. The worker can be hired as an internal agent, or an external agent under a contract. These two organizational modes correspond to in-house production and outsourcing, respectively. In each case, the agent earns experience benefits: future...

Chemical industry's managers have developed since mid-1970' a management and prevention risk policy named “Responsible Care”. This policy was a first draft for a sustainable management even if these two concepts were not exactly synonymous. Through genealogy of this practice and its use in a...