This paper analyzes the causes, responses, and consequences of the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident (March 2011) by comparing these with Three Mile Island (March 1979) and Chernobyl (April 1986). We identify three generic modes of organizational coordination: modular, vertical, and...

Abstract. In institutional studies various concepts and terms have been proposed to describe institutional phenomena and their nature. They include behavioral regularity, habituation, collective intentionality, common knowledge, shared beliefs, artifacts, rules of the game, system of signs, and...

This article proposes a simple framework for understanding an emergent diversity of linkage between corporate governance (CG) and organizational architecture (OA). It distinguishes discreet modes of their linkage by different combinatorial patterns between three basic assets: managers' human...

This paper argues that game-theoretic approach is incomplete for institutional studies, because comparative institutions as well as institutional changes involve a possibility of multiple equilibria. In order to solve the common knowledge problem, this paper proposes to unify game theoretic...

This article focuses on the roles of formal rules (laws) in institutional emergence, sustenance, crisis, and transition based on an examination of the Meiji Restoration and the Xinhai Revolution. It describes how formal rules in the polities of Qing China and Tokugawa Japan were enforced,...

Economists often identify a reduction in the share of agricultural employment as a quantitative indication of the economic growth of nations. But this process did not occur in earnest in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) until the 1980s and to some extent in Japan until well into the...

This paper analyzes the impacts of the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, which were amplified by a failure of coordination across the plant, corporate, industrial, and regulatory levels, resulting in a nuclear catastrophe, comparable in cost to...

Instead of taking the orthodox view of business corporations as nexuses of contracts as a basic premise, this article focuses on their aspect as “incorporating” autonomous systems of associational (group-level) cognition for business objectives. In order for such a system to be consistent...