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

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

In this paper, the concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms are described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analys...

/pdf/social-capital-in-the-creation-of-human-capital-1836wo2872.pdf

Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital

In this paper, we argue that the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities. We label this capability a firm's absorptive capacity and suggest that it is largely a function of the firm's level of prior related knowledge. The discussion focuses first on the cognitive basis for an individual's absorptive capacity including, in particular, prior related knowledge and diversity of background. We then characterize the factors that influence absorptive capacity at the organizational level, how an organization's absorptive capacity differs from that of its individual members, and the role of diversity of expertise within an organization. We argue that the development of absorptive capacity, and, in turn, innovative performance are history- or path-dependent and argue how lack of investment in an area of expertise early on may foreclose the future development of a technical capability in that area. We formulate a model of firm investment in research and development (R&D), in which R&D contributes to a firm's absorptive capacity, and test predictions relating a firm's investment in R&D to the knowledge underlying technical change within an industry. Discussion focuses on the implications of absorptive capacity for the analysis of other related innovative activities, including basic research, the adoption and diffusion of innovations, and decisions to participate in cooperative R&D ventures. **

/pdf/absorptive-capacity-a-new-perspective-on-learning-and-1n1c9gg9x0.pdf

Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation

Oliver E. Williamson delivered his Prize Lecture on 8 December 2009 at Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was introduced by Professor Bertil Holmlund, Chairman of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee.

Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression

Patent and Antitrust Law: A Legal and Economic Appraisal

Corporate Control and Business Behavior

RICHARD CRASWELL'S interesting comment on my article makes a series of evocative points. One of these is his contention that "Robinson Crusoe could take risks, but he could not trust or distrust until he met Friday."' A second is that use of the word "trust" to describe a calculative relationship is unobjectionable if the analyst remains calculative. Consider the first and suppose that Crusoe routinely places orders with a machine that correctly processes these with probability q. The machine requires periodic maintenance, however, and Friday manually processes the orders when the machine is down. Friday is more expensive and correctly processes the orders with probability q. Is it useful to say that the risks that Crusoe took with the machine have been supplanted by trust in Friday? What is the basis of this "trust transformation"? Possibly what Craswell (and others) have in mind is that Friday, unlike the machine, can behave strategically. Reference to opportunism (strategic hazards) moves the argument in the right direction. But to ascribe trust whenever Crusoe places an order with Friday is a very thin explanation.

Oliver E. Williamson

Papers

Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression

Patent and Antitrust Law: A Legal and Economic Appraisal

Corporate Control and Business Behavior

Calculated Trust, a Reply to Craswell's Comment on Williamson

A rational theory of the federal budgeting process