This paper presents a fully specified model of long-run growth in which knowledge is assumed to be an input in production that has increasing marginal productivity. It is essentially a competitive equilibrium model with endogenous technological change. In contrast to models based on diminishing returns, growth rates can be increasing over time, the effects of small disturbances can be amplified by the actions of private agents, and large countries may always grow faster than small countries. Long-run evidence is offered in support of the empirical relevance of these possibilities.

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Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth

Given assumptions about the characteristics of knowledge and the knowledge requirements of production, the firm is conceptualized as an institution for integrating knowledge. The primary contribution of the paper is in exploring the coordination mechanisms through which firms integrate the specialist knowledge of their members. In contrast to earlier literature, knowledge is viewed as residing within the individual, and the primary role of the organization is knowledge application rather than knowledge creation. The resulting theory has implications for the basis of organizational capability, the principles of organization design (in particular, the analysis of hierarchy and the distribution of decision-making authority), and the determinants of the horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm. More generally, the knowledge-based approach sheds new light upon current organizational innovations and trends and has far-reaching implications for management practice.

https://memberfiles.freewebs.com/84/90/65819084/documents/TOWARD%20A%20KNOWLEDGE-BASED%20THEORY%20OF%20THE.pdf

Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm

To date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship has lacked a conceptual framework. In this note we draw upon previous research conducted in the different social science disciplines and applied fields of business to create a conceptual framework for the field. With this framework we explain a set of empirical phenomena and predict a set of outcomes not explained or predicted by conceptual frameworks already in existence in other fields.

The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research

This paper draws on the social and behavioral sciences in an endeavor to specify the nature and microfoundations of the capabilities necessary to sustain superior enterprise performance in an open economy with rapid innovation and globally dispersed sources of invention, innovation, and manufacturing capability. Dynamic capabilities enable business enterprises to create, deploy, and protect the intangible assets that support superior long- run business performance. The microfoundations of dynamic capabilities—the distinct skills, processes, procedures, organizational structures, decision rules, and disciplines—which undergird enterprise-level sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capacities are difficult to develop and deploy. Enterprises with strong dynamic capabilities are intensely entrepreneurial. They not only adapt to business ecosystems, but also shape them through innovation and through collaboration with other enterprises, entities, and institutions. The framework advanced can help scholars understand the foundations of long-run enterprise success while helping managers delineate relevant strategic considerations and the priorities they must adopt to enhance enterprise performance and escape the zero profit tendency associated with operating in markets open to global competition. Copyright  2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

/pdf/explicating-dynamic-capabilities-the-nature-and-48rcozomaz.pdf

Explicating dynamic capabilities: the nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise performance

Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization

m E discussion note by Professor Warner Wick on "duties to oneself" in Ethics (January, 1960) and that of Professor Marcus Singer (April, 1959) to which it was a critical reply have suggested some further reflections possibly worth recording. Wick and Singer agree that "duties to ourselves play a fundamental role in ordinary thinking as well as in the schools" (Wick, op. cit., p. 160); but Singer holds that "taken literally, the idea of duties to oneself involves a contradiction," while Wick comments that "without duties to ourselves in a sense to be explained, the moral point of view makes no sense" (p. 158). This last statement may suggest that the issue lies in the phrase, "a sense to be explained," and that elucidation is not far to seek. Wick goes on, after the sentence first quoted:

I, Me, My Self, and My Duties

Institutionalism and Empiricism in Economics

The Nature and Significance of Economic Science. Lionel Robbins

The Economy of Human Energy. By Thomas Nixon Carver. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925. xvi, 287 pp. $3.00

It is well to state explicitly at the outset that the society considered in this essay is the sovereign democratic state, that is, a modern Western nation, where law is made and enforced by a responsible government within the context of representative institutions. Only a free society living under democratic government confronts or deals with social problems—problems of and for society as a unit. It is assumed that public opinion is committed to the general ideal of a practical maximum of individual freedom and freedom of association, hence to a minimum of enforced or “jural” law, prescribing or restricting personal conduct. That is, it holds to the ideal of association by free agreement or assent, subject to the state and its laws. The concepts are imprecise, and to make them workable and definite is a major function of law and government. The field of association to be chiefly considered here is that of “economic” relations. In the form now prevalent in the Western world, free economic association is a historical novelty, in origin closely intertwined with democracy or political freedom. It will be argued that these and other modes of freedom are in fact inseparable aspects of “liberal” culture. “Liberal” culture arose through a radical and historically swift transformation of the order which prevailed in mediaeval Western Europe. Without looking farther back in history, what is important is the antithetical character in essential respects of mediaeval and contemporary society in their structure and operation and in their accepted ideals.

Frank H. Knight

Papers

I, Me, My Self, and My Duties

Institutionalism and Empiricism in Economics

The Nature and Significance of Economic Science. Lionel Robbins

The Economy of Human Energy. By Thomas Nixon Carver. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925. xvi, 287 pp. $3.00

Social Economic Policy