This conceptual paper starts with a question regarding the nature of the firm: is the firm a nexus of contracts or a real entity? To answer this question, the article departs from a critique of firm contract theory that usually focuses on moral personification to propose some theoretical...

This paper aims to investigate the impact of interpersonal networks on the innovativeness of inventors. A significant amount of literature has been devoted to the analysis of network effects in the economic and managerial sciences. The main research works in this field have emphasized the strong...

The institutional and industrial evolution of the 1980s and 1990s considerably transformed the governance structures of production through globalization, financialization and the accentuation of competitive pressures. The governance structures of inter-firm relationships have changed greatly;...