This explorative paper argues that the central problem of economic organization is adaptation to unforeseen contingencies. However, flexibility is a rather neglected issue in the theory of economic organization. This contrasts with much organization theory, in which the seeking and processing of...

Ownership is fundamental to firm strategy, organization, and governance. Standard ownership concepts—mainly derived from agency and incomplete contracting theories—focus on its incentive effects. However, these concepts and theories neglect ownership's role as an instrument to match judgment...

We describe and discuss Ronald Coase's approach to managerial authority, placing it in the broader context of recent economics and management research on intrafirm coordination. To do so, we make use of work by Coase that is relatively little known, namely his writings on opportunity cost...

The MNC literature treats the (parent) HQ as entirely benevolent with respect to their perceived and actual intentions when they intervene at lower levels of the MNC. However, HQ may intervene in subsidiaries in ways that demotivate subsidiary employees and managers (and therefore harm...

A concern with teams was central to early attempts to grasp the nature of the firm, but fell out of favor in later work. We encourage a return to the emphasis on teams, but argue that the idea of teams as central to the nature of the firm needs to be grounded in an appreciation of the importance...

We argue that since Coase?s seminal 1937 paper on "The Nature of the Firm," there has been an odd and unjustified separation between price theory and the economics of organization. For example, matters of production has been the domain of the former exclusively. However, a new approach to...

The recent decade has witnessed a strong expansion of work on the firm, both from a capabilities perspective and from a contractual perspective. These two bodies of theories are often thought to be fundamentally different, because their domains of applications are different...

In the last 25 years, the economics of organization has emerged as a thriving branch of economics. In spite of some variety among the contributions to this field, it is fair to say that the literature is in agreement on the fundamentals. The basic insight is this: in addition to production costs...