Das vorliegende Buch will die Unternehmung aus der Perspektive des Sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschungsprogramms behandeln. Der Autor will die Lesenden überzeugen, daß es einer grundlegend neuen Sichtweise der Unternehmung bedarf.

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...

We develop a new perspective on the boundary of the firm that is consistent with the empirical observation that the share of entrepreneurs first decreases and then increases in the course of economic development. Existing theory based on transaction costs is difficult to relate to these...

Employment contracts give a principal the authority to decide flexibly which task his agent should execute. However, there is a tradeoff, first pointed out by Simon (1951), between flexibility and employer moral hazard. An employment contract allows the principal to adjust the task quickly to...