This paper presents a critical overview of some recent attempts at building formal models of organizations as information-processing and problem-solving entities. We distinguish between two classes of models according to the different objects of analysis. The first class includes models mainly...

In this paper we present a model of the interplay between learning, incentives and the allocation of decision rights in the context of a generalized agency problem. Within this context, not only actors face conflicting interests but diverging cognitive "isions"of the right course of action as...

In this work we analyze the characteristics and dynamics of organizations wherein members diverge in terms of capabilities and visions they hold, and interests which they pursue. How does society put together such distributed and possibly coflicting knowledge? The question is "Hayekian" in its...

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 work offers an overview of recent formalizations of organizational capabilities and learning. We first present the main characteristics both of NK models and of the approach based on Classifier Systems, focusing on their early applications to organization studies. We then discuss how the...

This paper investigates how investment in automation-intensive goods impacts on worker flows at the firm level and, within firms, across occupational categories. Resorting to an integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on firms, their imports, and employer-employee data for French...

The present study contributes to the existing literature on routinization and employment by capturing within-occupation task changes over the period 1980-2010. The main contributions are the measurement of such changes and the combination of two data sources on occupational task content for the...

Contrarily to the notion of a natural tendency of deindustrialization, this paper, documenting the existence of a variety of patterns of deindustrialization, performs a cross-country, long-term analysis. Looking at industrial sectors and their technological characteristics, categorised on the...

The diffusion of innovations is supposed to dissipate inventors' rents. Yet in many documented cases, inventors freely shared knowledge with their competitors. Using a model and case studies, this paper explores why sharing did not eliminate inventors' incentives. Each new technology coexisted...

This paper deals with the complex relationship between innovation and the labor market, analyzing the impact of new technological advancements on overall employment, skills and wages. After a critical review of the extant literature and the available empirical studies, novel evidence is...