How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Transaction cost economics (TCE) is one of the leading perspectives in management and organizational studies, yet debate continues regarding its empirical support. In this paper, we take stock of the large body of extant research and provide a systematic assessment of empirical evidence. In all, 308 statistical tests from 63 articles, selected according to a set of clear criteria, were examined across various dimensions. We assess not only the level of empirical support for the theory, but also the degree of paradigm consensus present in the empirical literature. Our analysis shows that results are mixed: while we found support in some areas (e.g., with regard to asset specificity), we also found considerable disagreement on how to operationalize some of TCE's central constructs and propositions, and relatively low levels of empirical support in other core areas (e.g., surrounding uncertainty and performance). We conclude that a more thorough empirical grounding of the theory's foundation is crucial to its future development, and offer several strategies for doing this. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A systematic assessment of the empirical support for transaction cost economics

Partnerships between companies receive a great deal of attention from top managers and researchers at the time of their formation. This attention results largely from the common perception that the initial structuring of partnerships and establishment of common goals determines partnership outcomes and success. In Alliance Advantage, Doz and Hamel shift the focus away from deal making to the internal processes within the partnership and the unfolding interactions among partners that play an important and relatively unexplored role in shaping outcomes. Focusing on the underlying reasons why companies enter alliances and the processes by which they continually learn from their interactions and re-evaluate common--and individual--goals, the authors paint a sophisticated picture of alliance dynamics over time. The authors challenge organizations to define their objectives for alliance formulation and consider whether their own corporate culture provides an "alliance ready" atmosphere.

Alliance advantage : the art of creating value through partnering

Nous testons ce modele dans le contexte de l’industrie americaine du courtage en ligne. Suite a une phase de collecte de donnees primaires, nous avons construit une base de donnees a partir de sources secondaires. 493 mouvements strategiques sont ainsi recenses sur la periode 1994-1999. Les resultats empiriques de cette recherche confirment l’interet d’un modele integrateur pour expliquer les choix d’acces aux competences sous conditions d’innovation.

https://www.strategie-aims.com/events/conferences/10-xiiieme-conference-de-l-aims/communications/493-nouveau-marche-et-nouvelles-competences-test-empirique-dans-le-cadre-de-lindustrie-du-courtage-en-ligne/download

Nouveau marché et nouvelles compétences : Test empirique dans le cadre de l'industrie du courtage en ligne

Focusing on the timing of entry has led to a relative neglect of the mode of entry into a new market. The purpose of this research is to extend the literature on market entry by developing and testing a model that predicts the entry mode into a new innovative market. The entry mode is here characterized as a function of two parameters: the entry timing and the effect of innovation on firm’s capabilities. Four modes of governance are included in the model: internal development, acquisition, alliance, and market transaction. The empirical analysis examines 76 entries that occurred in the U.S. online brokerage market between 1995 and 1999. Results of the multinomial logit indicate that: 1) internal development is favored by late entrants, 2) alliances and acquisitions are favored by late entrants, 3) market transactions play a significant role during the emerging phase of the market. Results regarding internal development and market transactions are contrary to our predictions. Results also indicate that the impact of innovation on firm’s capabilities does not appear to influence the mode of entry into a new innovative market.

https://www.strategie-aims.com/events/conferences/8-xveme-conference-de-l-aims/communications/2238-mode-of-entry-into-a-new-market-does-the-timing-of-entry-and-or-effect-of-innovation-on-competencies-matter/download

Mode of entry into a new market: does the timing of entry and/or effect of innovation on competencies matter?

This paper considers the impact of privatization on corporate entrepreneurship. The proposed model illustrates how a firm's capacity to implement internal changes is influenced by three factors: credibility of the privatization process, speed of the process, and the new regulatory environment. The type of changes (economic calculation, risk-taking, and alterness) and the extent to which they can be implemented ultimately determine the level of post-privatization corporate entrepreneurship that the firm will be abble to develop.

Privatization Process and Corporate Entrepreneurship in Former Monopolies: A Model for Developed Countries

Previous studies have shown that regulated firms diversify for reasons that are different than for unregulated firms. We explore some of these differences by providing a theoretical model that starts by considering the firm-regulator relationship as an incomplete information issue, in which a regulated incumbent has knowledge that the regulator does not have, but the firm cannot convey hard information about this knowledge. The incumbent faces both market and nonmarket competition from a new entrant. In that context, we show that when the firm faces tough nonmarket competition domestically, going abroad can create a mechanism that makes information transmission to the regulator more credible. International expansion can thus be a way to solve domestic nonmarket issues in addition to being a catalyst for growth.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2294318_code1998275.pdf?abstractid=2294318&mirid=2

International Expansion, Diversification and Regulated Firm Nonmarket Strategy

The political theory of regulation holds that deregulation of utilities obliges the former monopoly to abandon its rent-seeking activities to concentrate upon economic activities. However, the arguments presented by scholars to explain this strategic transformation are not entirely convincing. We argue in this paper that the role and the nature of the firm during the deregulation process have been underestimated in previous works. After describing the main steps of this process, we thus propose a dynamic explanation of the strategic transformation of the deregulated firm based on the concepts of firm capabilities, access to rents and transaction costs.

Bertrand Quelin

Papers

Nouveau marché et nouvelles compétences : Test empirique dans le cadre de l'industrie du courtage en ligne

Mode of entry into a new market: does the timing of entry and/or effect of innovation on competencies matter?

Privatization Process and Corporate Entrepreneurship in Former Monopolies: A Model for Developed Countries

International Expansion, Diversification and Regulated Firm Nonmarket Strategy

From Rent-Seeking Activities to Economic Activities: The Strategic Transformation of the Deregulated Firm