https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/jensen-meckling.pdf

Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure

Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage

Building Theories From Case Study Research - This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.

Building theories from case study research

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.

/pdf/the-iron-cage-revisited-institutional-isomorphism-and-xas5qn5nhy.pdf

The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields

The dynamic capabilities framework analyzes the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture by private enterprise firms operating in environments of rapid technological change. The competitive advantage of firms is seen as resting on distinctive processes (ways of coordinating and combining), shaped by the firm's (specific) asset positions (such as the firm's portfolio of difftcult-to- trade knowledge assets and complementary assets), and the evolution path(s) it has aflopted or inherited. The importance of path dependencies is amplified where conditions of increasing retums exist. Whether and how a firm's competitive advantage is eroded depends on the stability of market demand, and the ease of replicability (expanding intemally) and imitatability (replication by competitors). If correct, the framework suggests that private wealth creation in regimes of rapid technological change depends in large measure on honing intemal technological, organizational, and managerial processes inside the firm. In short, identifying new opportunities and organizing effectively and efficiently to embrace them are generally more fundamental to private wealth creation than is strategizing, if by strategizing one means engaging in business conduct that keeps competitors off balance, raises rival's costs, and excludes new entrants. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

/pdf/dynamic-capabilities-and-strategic-management-4iyi34iyh6.pdf

Dynamic capabilities and strategic management

Introduction: some roots and branches of organizational economics

Christina Garsten Christina Garsten holds a PhD in social anthropology from Stockholm University, where she has been Associate Professor since 2001, and Head of Department of Social Anthropology. She is also Research Director at Score (Stockholm University and Stockholm School of Economics). Her research interests are in the anthropology of organizations and markets, with current focus on emerging forms of regulation and accountability in the labour market and in transnational trade. Her publications include works on organizational culture, flexibilization of employment, and corporate social responsibility. Address: Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, SE 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Email: christina.garsten@score.su.se

Ibsen, Ideals, and the Subornation of Lies

Scholarship is less an individual than a collective activity. The history of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm illustrates two key aspects of the collective nature of scholarship. The first aspect is the dependence of scholarship on the institutions of scholarship. For a period of about 10 years beginning around 1954, The Graduate School of Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology was an extraordinary incubator of ideas, the "Vienna Circle" of its time. The second aspect is the cooperative interdependence of communities of scholars. Ideas take form and reproduce through an intergenerational, international pyramid of promiscuous and acrobatic intellectual intercourse.

Scholarship, Scholarly Institutions, and Scholarly Communities

The correspondence between Herbert Simon and Oliver Williamson reveals a history of disagreement ultimately resolved by a reinstatement of mutual respect and agreement. On the surface, the disagreements concern questions about the appropriate trade-offs between realism and comprehension in economic theory, on the extent to which the theory should be based on realistic behavioral assumptions. At another level, however, the disagreements expose a different issue: Whether the sacrifices of realism involved in seeking comprehensible theory are to be experienced as unfortunate but necessary costs or as agonizing falls from grace that may be forgiven but only if accompanied with pain and contrition.

Realism and comprehension in economics: A footnote to an exchange between Oliver E. Williamson and Herbert A. Simon

Power is a major explanatory concept in the study of social choice. It is used in studies of relations among nations, of community decision making, of business behavior, and of small-group discussion. In order to explore the power of power in empirical theories of social choice, this chapter proposes to do two things: First, it identifies three different variations in this basic approach to power as an intervening variable to suggest the kinds of uses of power. Second, the chapter examines six different classes of models of social choice that are generally consistent with what at least one substantial group of students means by social power. It asks what empirical and technical problems are there in the use of the concept of power and in the use of alternative concepts, and under what circumstances the concept of power does, or can, contribute to the effective prediction of social choice.

James G. March

Papers

Introduction: some roots and branches of organizational economics

Ibsen, Ideals, and the Subornation of Lies

Scholarship, Scholarly Institutions, and Scholarly Communities

Realism and comprehension in economics: A footnote to an exchange between Oliver E. Williamson and Herbert A. Simon

The Power of Power