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

Evolution of International Management Structures . Edited by Harold F. Williamson. Newark, Del., University of Delaware Press, 1975. Pp. xii + 254. $20.00.

Fourteen years separate the original Justice Department Merger Guidelines of May 30, 1968, the last day of Donald Turner's term as head of the Antitrust Division, and the Merger Guidelines of June 14, 1982, which were issued in the second year of William Baxter's tenure. Because merger policy plays an essential role in antitrust enforcement, the promulgation of new Merger Guidelines provides an important means of assessing changes in that area. Inasmuch as a decade appears to be a useful interval for evaluating antitrust developments,' a comparison of the recent with the earlier Guidelines should help to disclose what kinds of progress in antitrust enforcement (if any) have occurred within the interval.

Oliver E. Williamson

Papers

Evolution of International Management Structures . Edited by Harold F. Williamson. Newark, Del., University of Delaware Press, 1975. Pp. xii + 254. $20.00.

Vertical Merger Guidelines: Interpreting the 1982 Reforms

Antitrust Enforcement and the Modern Corporation

Opening the Black Box of Firm and Market Organization: Antitrust

Applications to Economic Development and Reform