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

Asset specificity and economic organization

Part 1 Knowledge - its acquisition, sharing and/or asymmetry: the participatory generation of information rents and the theory of the firm, Masahiko Aoki common knowledge and the co-ordination of economic activities, Jacques Cremer profit sharing, information and employment, Matti Pohjola. Part 2 Vertical integration and the strategic management of the enterprise: what is vertical integration?, Michael H.Riordan vertical integration, transaction costs and "learning by using", Kurt Lundgren the firm as a nexus of internal and external contracts, Torger Reve. Part 3 Issues of labour organization: the viability of worker ownership - an economic perspective on the political structure of the firm, Henry Hansmann intellectual skill and the role of employees as constituent members of large firms in contemporary Japan, Kazuo Koike the implicit contract for corporate law firm associates - "ex post" opportunism and "ex ante" bonding, Robert H.Mooking. Part 4 Finance and the political structure of the firm: capital structure as a mechanism of control - a comparison of financial systems, Erik Berglof long-term contracts in financial markets, Hakan Lindgren the principle of external accountability in competitive markets, Herbert Gintis union militancy and plant designs, Kar Ove Moene can transaction cost economics explain trade associations?, Marc Schneiberg and J.Rogers Hollingsworth.

The firm as a nexus of treaties

Although there is growing agreement that bounded rationality is the appropriate cognitive assumption for describing economic organization,' there is less agreement on how the self-interestedness of economic actors should be described. Transaction cost economics has proposed that economic agents be described as opportunistic, where this contemplates self-interest seeking with guile. That has turned out to be a controversial formulation. I begin with a brief discussion of behavioral assumptions, including an explanation of why opportunism is centrally implicated. Recent approaches to economic organization that emphasize trust are considered in the following section. The effects of suppressing opportunism are examined in the third section and conclusions follow.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/mde.4090140203

Oliver E. Williamson

Papers

Asset specificity and economic organization

The firm as a nexus of treaties

Opportunism and its critics

Economic organization : firms, markets, and policy control

The Institutions of Governance