Existing research on ecosystems is overly descriptive and structural. While description and structure are important, in this essay we argue for a microanalytic and firm-specific approach to ecosystems. We focus on the “hypothesis-led” firm—the role that a firm-specific hypothesis plays in...

What is now called the judgment-based approach to entrepreneurship (JBA) has a rich pedigree in Austrian economics and continues to grow rapidly in that tradition as well as in various research fields in business and management. The JBA has also attracted some criticisms. Frédéric Sautet’s...

The taxation of the multinational enterprise (MNE) has been a continuing concern for policy-makers. We argue that the changing nature of the mobile MNE (e.g., its improved ability to fine-slice the value chain and disperse it geographically) makes it increasingly important to rethink current tax...

Research has examined how “economizing” and “strategizing” mechanisms interact in driving competitive outcomes, but the role of coalitions in this process has received little attention. Coalitions between players are established to increase value creation (i.e., economizing), as well as...

The paper begins by providing a brief overview and discussion of the modern economics of organization, concentrating in particular on the work of incomplete contract theorists. I then turn to a discussion of Loasby’s view of the firm and incomplete contracts. The point here is that while...

The notion of distributed knowledge is increasingly often invoked in discussions of economic organization. In particular, the claim that authority is inefficient as a means of coordination in the context of distributed knowledge has become widespread. However, very little analysis has been...

This paper makes the point that Thorstein Veblen should be considered one of the important precursors of the emerging competence-based approach to the firm. Thus, the emphasis in this literature on firms as path-dependent entities characterised by their heterogeneous knowledgebases, operating...