Many writers argue that economic organization will be strongly transformed in the emerging knowledge economy. Thus, authority relations will wither, or at least undergo significant changes; legal and ownership-based definitions of the boundaries of firms will become irrelevant; and there will be...

This is a discussion from an economist's perspective of the concept of business systems. This concept has recently been proposed by Richard Whitley as a means of conceptualizing the close connections between dominant social institutions and ways of coordinating economic activities as well as the...

This paper develops a property rights-based view of strategy (the “PRV”). A property right (or economic right) is an individual’s net valuation, in expected terms, of the ability to directly consume the services of an asset (including, e.g., a monopoly position) or consume it indirectly...

The notion of full asset ownership is important in economics, for example, in recent work on the boundaries of the firm, which has been taken up with the issue why it matters who owns an asset. However, recognizing that assets have multiple attributes, and that these may be subject to capture in...

This paper is taken up with discussing the extent to which existing economic theories of the firm are helpful for constructing what Rumelt called a "strategic theory of the firm". Such a theory explains the existence, boundaries, organization and competitive advantage of the firm. The modern...

We address the closely related phenomena of corporate venturing and spin-offs in the context of organizational economics, for example, agency perspectives and the evolutionary perspective on firms. These perspectives allow us to say something about both the amount and nature of variety creation...

Born in 1930, Brian J. Loasby is generally recognised as the leading post-Marshallian economic theorist. He has published widely on the theory of economic organisation, methodology, and the history of economic ideas, including Smith and Keynes. His work includes the now-classic Choice,...