Berkshire Hathaway, among history's largest and most successful corporations, shuns middlemen; its chairman, the legendary investor Warren Buffett, excoriates financial intermediaries. The acquisitive conglomerate rarely borrows money, retains brokers, or hires consultants. Its governance is...

Over the last decades, the internationalization of the value chain has allowed firms to exploit cross-country differences in environmental and labor regulation (and enforcement) in ways that have led to a large number of NGO campaigns and consumer boycotts criticizing "unethical" practices. How...

We examine the relationship between the organization of a multi-divisional firm and its ability to adapt production decisions to changes in the environment. We show that even if lower-level managers have superior information about local conditions, and incentive conflicts are negligible, a...

The paper argues that the shape of the long-run size distribution of business firms is basically determined by the availability of organisational capabilities, and that its changes over time (the "direction" of change) depend on the way in which (exogenous) "environmental" conditions affect...

The Central East European economies are competing for international investment capital, especially for FDI in order to support transformation. The paper explores how the Siemens AG, one of the world's largest MNCs, allocates investments towards and within Central East Europe and how they fit...

Organizational design (firm boundaries) is an important aspect of a firm's internal structure and is affected by market conditions. Our main focus in this paper is on firm boundaries - firms' integration decisions - and how these decisions interact with product market competition, in a setting...

Common Law Definition of Employment:What is the difference between an employee and an independent contractor? Both do work for pay; I do a job, and you pay me for it. It's not complicated — until government gets involved. Formal employees require paperwork, legal and regulatory compliance, and...

The question of intellectual property for original fashion design has attracted enormous public attention in recent years. As we show in this chapter, the question has a storied past. In the 1930s, as American fashion was coming into its own as a cultural force, designers worried about...