Designing a firm’s boundaries can lead to substantial strategic regeneration. But the question is, how? Moving beyond transaction-level analysis, we consider how the design of the firm’s overall boundaries (rather than individual make-vs-buy choices) yield strategic advantages in addition to...

This paper considers how ideas from evolutionary theory and the neo-Schumpeterian tradition can be fruitfully combined with ideas from Herbert Simon and the Carnegie tradition on decomposability and cognitive limits. Rather than focusing on any one individual issue, this paper outlines a...

When do firms expand abroad? Theory to date suggests that global expansion happens when firm-specific competitive advantages outweigh country-specific difficulties in operating abroad. Differences in culture, in legislation, in administrative practices, and in the overall institutional...

By providing a theoretical framework that explains how and why vertical dis-integration happens, this inductive longitudinal analysis of the mortgage banking value chain sheds light on one of the least studied aspects of industry evolution. I find that gains from specialization set off a process...

The concept of vertical architecture defines the scope of a firm and the extent to which it is open to final and intermediate markets. A firm can make or buy inputs, and transfer outputs downstream or sell them. Permeable vertical architectures are partly integrated and partly open to the...

In this paper, we consider how a better understanding of entrepreneurial activities can help explain how firm and industry boundaries change over time and how a more comprehensive understanding of boundary setting can explain where entrepreneurial activities are directed. We start from the...