As digital technologies increase the occurrence of big bang disruptions across industries, companies old and new find they have less time both to profit from their own disruptor and to unleash the next one. This article describes the drivers of this phenomenon, and offers strategic responses...

The nature of disruptive innovation, first studied by Joseph Schumpeter, has changed dramatically in the wake of rapidly and predictably deflating costs for embedded digital technology. New disruptors now enter the marker both better and cheaper than existing products. The result is devastating...

To date, much of the literature on institutional economics has relied on abstract metaphors based in exchange. Thus, Williamson introduced the fundamental insights surrounding his “transaction costs” model and discussed the governance of contracts in exchange relationships. Yet organizations...

This work offers an overview of recent formalizations of organizational capabilities and learning. We first present the main characteristics both of NK models and of the approach based on Classifier Systems, focusing on their early applications to organization studies. We then discuss how the...

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

Hayek (1945) argues that local information is a key to understanding the efficiency of alternative economic systems and whether production should be centralized or decentralized. The Chinese experience of decentralizing SOEs confirms this insight: when the distance to the government is farther,...

Authority, as the right to instruct others and to expect obedience, is often presented as a key mechanism for coordination. But when obedience is voluntary, how is authority sustained and how effective is it in managing behavior? To address these questions, this paper examines a repeated game of...

The profitability of a firm is jointly determined by it's organizational structure and the market structure. To explore the effects of market factors on optimal organizational structure we develop a real-time information processing model of a multi unit firm in a dynamic duopoly environment. Our...

The rise of the network as a form of economic organization renders problematic our standard understanding of how capitalism is governed. As the governance of production shifts from vertical integration to horizontal contract, a puzzle arises: how do contracts, presumed to be susceptible to...

An agent and a principal are engaged in an ongoing relationship, where the agent receives project opportunities of random value and is biased towards implementation. Each period, the principal elicits a (non-contractible) recommendation from the agent, compares it to a random outside option and...