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

The transaction cost logic of economic organization had its origins in a tautology, which Ronald Coase wryly defines as "a proposition that is clearly right" (1988:00). The basic insight, first advanced by Coase in his classic 1937 article (1952:341) and restated for this conference, is this: "A firm . . . [has] a role to play in the economic system if ... transactions [can] be organized within the firm at less cost than if the same transactions were carried out through the market. The limit to the size of the firm ... [is reached] when the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm [exceed] the costs of carrying out the same transactions through the market" (1988). Albeit "clearly right," the argument is also subject to the objection that "almost anything can be rationalized by invoking suitably specified transaction costs" (Fisher: 322, n. 5). That the state of transaction cost economics in 1972 was approximately where Coase had left it in 19371 is largely attributable to the failure, for thirty-five years, to operationalize this important concept. That this flat trajectory has been supplanted by exponential growth during the past fifteen

The Logic of Economic Organization

This manuscript provides the Nobel laureate's reflections on transaction cost economics. The overview section frames governance as the overarching concept and transaction cost economics as the means by which to breathe operational content into governance and organization. The vertical integration section identifies efficiency factors associated with determining when a firm produces a good or service to its own needs rather than outsource. A discussion of the rudiments of transaction cost analysis is subsequently provided. Puzzles and challenges that require pushing the logic of efficient governance to completion are examined and followed by concluding remarks.

/pdf/transaction-cost-economics-the-natural-progression-2sf0rxigke.pdf

Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression †

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relations, Contracting.

Corporate Control and Business Behavior

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2728604.pdf

Oliver E. Williamson

Papers

The Logic of Economic Organization

Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression †

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relations, Contracting.

Corporate Control and Business Behavior

The Impact of Economics on Contemporary Sociology