When economists have considered organizations, much attention has focused on the boundary of the firm, rather than its internal structures and processes. In contrast, this essay sketches three approaches to the economic theory of internal organization - one substantially developed, another...

This discussion paper reports and reflects on the reception of our article "Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box", which was published in 2009 in the Academy of Management Review and granted the AMR Decade Award in 2019. While we were invited by the editor of the journal to...

The note on which an entry for the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management will draw offers a beginner's guide to path dependency in technologies and organizations. We address the very meaning of the concept and its centrality in various aspects of economic analysis. We outline the various...

Internal organization relies heavily on psychological consistency requirements. This perspective has been emphasized in modern compensation theory, but has not been extended to organization theory. The idea is developed by starting from Williamson's discussion of idiosyncratic exchange. The...

Der vorliegende Beitrag befaßt sich mit wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen zur Erklärung der Personalpolitik von Unternehmen. Zunächst wird diskutiert, inwieweit die existierenden Ansätze überhaupt miteinander verglichen werden können. Eine Hauptschwierigkeit besteht darin, daß die jeweiligen...