This paper generalizes Porter’s notion of the value chain for the analysis of service industries. The generalization entails that the flow and the physical transformation and assembly of goods that are characteristic of manufacturing are generalized into flows and transformation of data and...

This paper investigates the strategic impact of organizational design on product market competition. In a duopoly model of horizontal and vertical product differentiation, each firm's manager can impose a product location, or delegate responsibility to select product location to his subordinate....

We consider the question whether top tennis players in a top tournament (Wimbledon) employ an optimal (efficient) service strategy.We show that top players do not, in general, follow an optimal strategy, and we provide a lower bound of the inefficiency.The inefficiency regarding winning a point...

This paper presents elements of a cognitive theory of the firm, from the perspective of embodied cognition.It entails the notion of 'cognitive distance' between people that have developed their cognition in different environments. This yields the notion of the firm as a 'focusing device', to...

Using insights from 'embodied cognition' and a resulting 'cognitive theory of the firm', I aim to contribute to the further development of evolutionary theory of organizations, in the specification of organizations as 'interactors' that carry organizational competencies as 'replicators', within...

In designing a production model for firms that generate multiple outputs, we take as a starting point that such multi-output production refers to economies of scope, which in turn originate from joint input use and input externalities. We provide a nonparametric characterization of cost...

Abstract: We present evidence from a randomized field experiment in rural Mongolia on the comparative poverty impact of group versus individual microcredit. We find a positive impact of group loans but not of individual loans on entrepreneurship and food consumption. Moreover, group borrowers...

What determines the perceived productivity of young and older workers? In this study we present evidence for (Dutch) employers and employees. By confronting the perceptions of employers and employees some remarkable similarities and differences are revealed. It turns out that productivity...

Recent insights from the ‘embodied cognition’ perspective in cognitive science, supported by neural research, provide a basis for a ‘methodological interactionism’ that transcends both the methodological individualism of economics and the methodological collectivism of (some) sociology,...