meta paradigm change and the theory of the firm many seemingly unrelated debates on the theory of the firm are in fact part of a single deeper transformation of the social sciences as the foundational assumptions of 20th century social science have slowly been shown by science to be false new sub paradigms have emerged which cumulatively drop i theoretical assumptions about markets to explain firms ii epistemological assumptions about knowledge to explain diversity and iii metaphysical assumptions about causality to explain technical change debates occur across each of these levels

a process model of capability development lessons from the electronic commerce strategy at bolsa de valores de guayaquil past literature using the resource based view of the firm has concentrated on attributes of firms capabilities and on strategies for exploiting existing firm specific assets comparatively little research has been conducted on how a firm develops manages and deploys capabilities to support its business strategy this study seeks to understand the process of capability development and to establish a model that has both theoretical and practical significance a longitudinal case study of the electronic commerce strategy formation and implementation at bolsa de valores de guayaquil an ecuadorian stock exchange yielded qualitative data that allowed inductive modeling of the capability development process the model reveals that capability development in support of a new strategy is a gradual process that is cumulative expansive and very dependent on the way that difficult to imitate resources and actions are combined at bolsa de valores de guayaquil actions that supported the development of the firm s capability to strategize seem to have contributed the most in the initial phase of the strategy formation and implementation actions that helped the development of the firm s capability to be flexible appear to have contributed the most during the middle phase and actions that supported the development of the firm s capabilities to integrate and engender trust seem to have contributed the most in the final phase in addition the key resources that supported the overall capabilities development process included leadership organizational culture information technology long term view and social networks implications of this model for both research and practice are discussed

towards a capability theory of innovating firms implications for management and policy author s teece dj abstract the author 2017 business enterprises lie at the core of ecosystems that drive economic development and growth in market economies yet until recently mainstream economics has mostly treated firms like homogeneous black boxes run by opportunistic managers the field of strategic management has developed a more nuanced approach to the understanding of how firms are created organized and grow how they innovate and compete and how managers manage one of the leading paradigms in the field is the dynamic capabilities framework in this paper contrasts and complementarities are drawn between dynamic capabilities and economic theories of the firm including transaction cost economics and agency theory connections to the cambridge school are highlighted including the duality between keynes s animal spirits and the dynamic capabilities entrepreneurial owner manager leibenstein s x inefficiency is juxtaposed here with d ineffectiveness knowledge based theories of the firm consistent with cambridge conventions emerge intellectual exchange between strategic management and economics is encouraged to help improve the intuition behind models of firms and the economy

opportunism is not the only reason why firms exist why an explanatory emphasis on opportunism may mislead management strategy the object of the present essay is neither to overturn transaction cost economics nor to deny the reality of opportunism instead it is to question the explanatory role of the concept of opportunism in the transaction cost analysis of oliver williamson and his followers williamson has suggested that potential or actual opportunism emerges as the source of the transaction costs involved in monitoring and enforcing contracts on the contrary it is shown here that there are several additional and likely sources of contract default or incomplete performance williamson s explanatory concentration on opportunism thus misidentifies the reasons for different hierarchical governance structures in the real world as these additional sources are ignored the emphasis on opportunism can impair a true understanding of the inner workings of the firm and be a misleading guide for practical questions of organizational design and corporate strategy

strategy research governance and competence perspectives business strategy is a complex subject and is usefully examined from several perspectives this paper applies the lenses of governance and competence to the study of strategy both the governance and the competence perspectives have had the benefit of distinguished antecedents they have also had to deal with tautological reputations i begin with the governance perspective with emphasis on the six key moves through which it has been operationalized i then examine the competence perspective in these same six respects governance challenges the competence perspective to apply itself more assiduously to operationalization including the need to choose and give definition to one or more units of analysis of which the routine is a promising candidate the research challenges posed by competence to which governance can and should respond include dynamic transaction costs learning and the need to push beyond generic governance to address strategy issues faced by particular firms with their distinctive strengths and disabilities a lively research future for these two perspectives individually and in combination is projected copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd business strategy is an expansive enterprise not only do all of the functional areas in the business school relate but strategy is by nature interdisciplinary all of the social sciences especially economics and organization theory plus contract law are implicated indeed in the high technology arena where some of the most difficult strategy issues reside engineering and the law on intellectual property rights also have a bearing of the various approaches to the study of strategy this paper focuses on the governance and competence perspectives both perspectives combine economic reasoning with organization theory as between these two the governance

filling a gap in traditional transaction cost economics towards transaction benefits based analysis abstract this paper analyzes dyadic partnership formation between asymmetric buyers and specialized suppliers in the first part of the paper different economics of organization based approaches are evaluated their basic implications concerning the rise of partnerships are derived in the second part a dynamized transaction cost and benefit model is introduced to analyze the most critical elements of a typical partnership decision the final part is based on insights from practice and in depth interviews among 12 specialized suppliers and their four large incumbent partners in the information and telecommunications industry

asset specificity and economic organization abstract this paper examines the optimization problem of firm and market organization in which both production cost and transaction cost differences are expressed as a function of asset specificity in general markets enjoy advantages by aggregating the demands of many buyers thereby realizing economies of scale or scope such production cost savings need to be assessed in relation to the transaction cost advantages that internal organization sometimes enjoys over markets in adapting to changed circumstances as it turns out both production cost economies and the transaction cost differences between firm and market organization vary systematically with the characteristics of the investments this paper employs a unified framework to assess the choice of organization form the condition of asset specificity is featured

the organization of work a historical dimension abstract an evaluation of the organizational efficiencies of various modes of production by o e williamson has led him to conclude that given identical technologies the factory was more efficient than the putting out system the superior organizational efficiency of the former he maintains was one reason for the transition to factory production during the nineteenth century this paper challenges that view it is argued that the way in which williamson evaluates efficiency is open to methodological and other objections and that there is limited empirical support for his hypothesis given an identical technology the evidence suggests that the putting out system was usually able to compete with the factory

governance form and organizational adaptation lessons from the savings and loan industry in the 1980s this paper explores how governance form affects the organizational capacity for adaptation we make a general case about the importance of governance in adaptation and we identify three mechanisms through which governance form may affect organizations ability to manage the competency and failure traps that often frustrate the process we look for evidence of these mechanisms through a study of the u s savings and loan s l industry in the 1980s this is an apt context because s ls were confronted by severe environmental changes that suggested a need for change of a relatively radical sort during this decade and because the industry contains a mix of governance forms stock form firms and mutual associations we examine whether mutuals and stocks differed in their propensity to move away from their traditional business and mission of residential mortgage lending in response to the challenges of the 1980s we also consider whether stocks and mutuals differed in their performance outcomes during this decade results indicate that mutuals were slightly less prone toward change but were in no sense inertial they also show that mutuals performed better overall and appeared to change more successfully than did stock firms the overall pattern of results suggests that mutual governance was a resource that allowed s ls to better balance exploration and exploitation in the face of a changing and ambiguous environment we consider the broader implications of these findings for research on organizational adaptation governance form and governance more generally

vertical governance change and product differentiation under decreasing component costs in deciding on whether and when to outsource component production firms should consider the trade off between total production costs and the ability to horizontally differentiate products we study the outsourcing decision in a duopoly under decreasing but uncertain market rates for components given that outsourcing increases the substitutability of the final products we find that there is at least one firm that eventually outsources component production because it cannot differentiate its product enough by in house production to justify the eventually higher costs the follower outsources at a lower market rate or may even remain vertically integrated the follower thus incurs the eventually much higher in house component costs longer while the low substitutability is enjoyed by both firms under endogenous roles firms thus engage in a preemption game to be the first to outsource we also find that firms generally outsource at lower market rates if uncertainty is higher but seek to preempt at remarkably higher market rates if substitutability remains low

alfred chandler and capabilities theories of strategy and management alfred d chandler s scholarship on the large industrial enterprise has deepened understanding of economic development and helped establish the field of strategic management research chandler s monumental work emphasized the importance of organizational innovation managerial acumen and business performance a particular contribution was the support provided for a capabilities theory of the business enterprise this article also looks at recent developments in industrial organization that are less well explained and appreciated in the chandler framework copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

economics in action ideas institutions policies when i left the university of chicago to become secretary of labor about a quarter century ago i recognized that i was leaving the role of professional economist and taking on the responsibilities of a player in the public policy process but i quickly discovered that i could not get away from economics habits of thinking stay with you so i have found myself to be still an economist but responsible for action i had some helpful tutorials along the way i recall a session with the ways and means committee and its chairman wilbur mills not long after i started as secretary of labor the subject was unemployment compensation i was invited to take part in the committee s deliberations and did so vigorously the chairman interrupted me mr secretary when you are in your classroom you are accustomed to getting your way but down here we compromise but i also learned that the real task is to know when to compromise and when to hold firm how to move tactically while maintaining your strategy late one night some two years later when i was budget director and we were at the end of the long annual struggle to contain spending i asked a veteran civil servant sam cohen if there was really any difference between republicans and democrats when it came to the budget they both spend money he replied but the democrats enjoy it so cuts in government spending are easier to advocate than to execute that is the part that takes real conviction in the congress as well as in the executive branch i have also realized increasingly that my training in economics has had a major influence on the way i think about public policy tasks even when they have no particular relationship to economics our discipline makes one think ahead ask about indirect consequences take note of variables that may not be directly under consideration economics deals with markets and how they work and seeks out the wide ramifications of policies and events across industries and over time economic policies are partially anticipated before enactment and continue to affect the economy often in ways not anticipated long after they have been put in place results occur but with a lag the key to a successful policy is often to get the right process going while the economist is accustomed to the concept of lags the politician likes instant results the tension comes because as i have seen on many occasions the economist s lag is the politician s nightmare so my training as an economist has taught me also to be a strategist who tries to understand the constellation of forces present in a situation and to arrange them to point toward a desirable result a kind of patient impatience is required with this in mind i address you about some opportunities and problems facing us today

supplier performance in vertical alliances the effects of self enforcing agreements and enforceable contracts the paper examines the significance of enforceability and adaptability in governing vertical alliances and their performance ramifications for suppliers literature on supplier relations suggests that suppliers are skeptical of close ties with their buyers helper 1991 helper and sako 1995 such skepticism persists in spite of the fact that buyers are writing longer enforceable contracts with fewer suppliers in this context the paper develops a transaction cost economics tce based model that distinguishes between the verifiable and nonverifiable aspects of governance attributes of safeguards incentive intensity and adaptability in explaining supplier performance variations the paper argues that the following factors prove valuable for suppliers 1 the adaptive and collaborative orientation fostered by the original equipment manufacturer s oem s credible commitment to the exchange and by information sharing on the part of the supplier 2 the presence of certain nonverifiable safeguards and 3 the incentives inherent in target pricing these assertions have been tested using data from the home appliance industry results indicate that information sharing together with 1 oem dependence and 2 target pricing does indeed enhance supplier performance also results suggest that while nonverifiable safeguards can help verifiable safeguards do not have a positive association with supplier interests under certain conditions then suppliers can venture into closer relationships with buyers and benefit

explicating political hazards and safeguards a transaction cost politics approach we apply the logical of comparative institutional analysis to the question of the governance of the relationship between private investors and the government we consider two strategies that investors may follow lobbying for the creation of a specialized political governance structure or the reliance on more general political mechanisms to influence policy in that sector on an ongoing basis we identify political hazards as crucial determinant of the choice of political governance and the transactional attributes that give rise to such hazards finally we highlight shift parameters in a nation s institutional environment that influence the choice between specialized and generalized political governance mechanisms

the dynamic capabilities of firms an introduction an expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held firms resorting to resource bas ed strategy attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance however winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences this source of competitive advantage dynamic capabilities emphasizes two aspects first it refers to the shifting character of the environment second it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting integrating and re configuring internal and external organizational skills resources and functional competences toward changing environment 3 only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment the dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge and facilitate prescription this paper argues that the competitive advanis tage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines z operating inside the firm embedded in the firm s processes and conditioned by its history it offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modern business j firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances with the help of industry studies in the usa and elsewhere

how to deliver foreign aid the case of projects governed by the spanish international agency summary international agencies use two alternative modes of governance to deliver international aid projects under bilateral agreements with recipient governments in house or through incumbent ngos through the lenses of institutional and transaction cost economics this article examines 95 international aid projects delivered in morocco and ecuador by the spanish international agency finding that those projects delivered in house present different features than those projects outsourced through incumbent ngos specifically international aid projects delivered in house involve important investments in specific assets are much more complex and can turn the public agency into a hostage of its own disbursement

investment options and the business cycle abstract this paper extends r mehra e c prescott recursive competitive equilibrium the case of homogeneous households econometrica 48 1980 1365 1380 to a production economy with two capital goods it is an rbc model in which each unit of investment requires a new idea an option when options are scarce new capital is harder to put in place and the value of old capital rises thus the stock market and tobin s q are negative indexes of intangibles during a boom q rises gradually as options are used up because investment represents an exercise of options it has an intertemporal substitution tradeoff that is absent from the adjustment cost model equilibrium may be efficient even without markets for knowledge the stock market may suffice

extending the theory of the multinational enterprise internalization and strategic management perspectives this paper assesses the continued relevance of buckley and casson s 1976 book on the future of the multinational enterprise mne against a background of increasing criticism of transaction cost related scholarly work we demonstrate that the schism that can currently be observed in the field between international business and international management is misguided as the transaction cost internalization school may offer useful insights to both management scholars and managers for this to occur however it is necessary first to extend the empirical scope of transaction cost based reasoning to include the functioning of differentiated network mnes the paper suggests that buckley and casson s book still represents a beacon of clarity and a superb starting point for the study of the mne even if the complexity of this governance structure has grown far beyond what any international business scholar or even international management scholar could have predicted 25 years ago

testing for homotheticity of educational production models since the 1960s the performance of public schools has typically been investigated in the context of educational production functions e g hanushek 1986 studies generally relate educational outcomes such as standardized test scores or graduation rates to quantities and qualities of inputs such as the number and quality of teachers school spending on facilities and family peer group characteristics these educational production functions have been estimated by regression methods e g hanushek 1986 sanders 1993 summers and wolfe 1977 and by nonparametric methods e g fare grosskopf and weber 1989 the studies offer interesting insights on such issues as the effect of class size and teacher quality on student performance and the relative efficiency of schools however little attention has been given to the characteristics of the educational production technology despite the fact that some important policy questions cannot be addressed without knowledge of these characteristics one such characteristic is input homotheticity for multiple educational outcomes outputs and inputs input homotheticity means loosely speaking that each isoquant is a radial expansion or contraction of the isoquant corresponding to unit outcomes outputs see primont and primont 1994 for a formal definition to illustrate suppose that schools must be downsized perhaps as a result of declining enrollments how should downsizing be implemented if the educational production technology is input homothetic then it is economically optimal to reduce input expenditures proportionally but otherwise it is not primont and primont 1994 provide a new test for input homotheticity in this paper we use data on outputs and inputs for eleven missouri school districts to illustrate how to irnplement such a test

a resource based theory of the firm knowledge versus opportunism this paper develops a resource based knowledge based theory of the firm its thesis is that the organizational mode through which individuals cooperate affects the knowledge they apply to business activity we focus on the polar cases of organization within a firm as compared to market contracting there will be a difference in the knowledge that is brought to bear and hence in joint productivity under the two options thus as compared to opportunism based transaction cost theory we advance a separate yet complementary answer to the question why do firms exist our aim is to develop an empirically relevant and complementary theory of why firms are formed a theory based on irreducible knowledge differences between individuals rather than the threat of purposeful cheating or withholding of information we assume limited cognitive abilities on the part of individuals bounded rationality and assume that opportunistic behavior will not occur the latter allows us to determine whether resource based

theoretical isolation and explanatory progress transaction cost economics and the dynamics of dispute two related goals are pursued first the development of and debates around oliver williamson s version of transaction cost economics are organised in terms of an emerging metatheoretical framework it proposes looking at economic theorising and its changes in terms of rival theoretical isolations which are often responses to challenging explanatory questions as a side product williamson s strategy of theorising is portrayed second using transaction cost economics as an illustration and as a source of inspiration the paper amends and refines the earlier framework of theoretical isolation by incorporating notions of explaining and explained items notions of progress in questions as well as increased causal penetration and increased degree of unification and the notion of the dynamics of dispute copyright 2004 oxford university press

knowledge based approaches to the theory of the firm some critical comments it is argued that kogut and zander kogut b u zander 1992 knowledge of the firm combinative capabilities and the replication of technology organ sci 3 383 397 and conner conner k r 1991 a historical comparison of resource based theory and five schools of thought within industrial organization economics do we have a new theory of the firm j management 17 121 154 erred in the specific way in which they claimed that a distinct theory of the multi person firm can be constructed on the basis of a theory of organizational knowledge or from resource based insights it is not possible to tell very much of a story about why there should be firms in lieu of notions such as opportunism or moral hazard however properly interpreted knowledge based theories may help shed light on issues relating to the boundaries and internal organization of the firm

the rise and fall of global network alliances the purpose of this article is to develop an evolutionary transaction cost economics approach capable of explaining the rise and fall of global network alliances once created to provide global services to multinational companies in this global services market market contracting and integrated corporations eventually replaced global network alliances both inefficiently designed or applied governance and efficiently realigned governance may explain why alliances failed and subsequently were replaced by more appropriate market contracting and integrated firms the global alliance story also illustrates the point that economic actors initially may not have the requisite capacity to look ahead and recognize contractual hazards but that such capacity and recognition may gradually evolve as a product of negative experience copyright 2008 oxford university press

efficiency in the public and private french water utilities prospects for benchmarking this article uses a data envelopment analysis dea and a stochastic frontier analysis sfa to assess the relative technical efficiency of 177 decision making units in the french water supply sector in 2009 water utilities can be directly managed by the local authorities or contracted out and then managed by a private operator the use of a three stage model mixing dea and sfa enables us to dissociate managerial inefficiencies from the structural inefficiencies and statistical noise after having taken the environmental variables into account we find that private management are on average slightly less efficient than public management an explanation to this performance gap can be different resource management

a conversation with sidney winter on the contributions of alfred chandler david j teece discusses with sidney g winter some of the major contributions of alfred d chandler jr topics discussed include path dependence and the organizational embeddedness of competences and capabilities the recent financial crisis and the electronic century in terms of chandler s priorities teece and winter also consider both the promise and limitations of the chandlerian approach to related matters in business and management theory copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

governance and competence how can they be combined transaction cost economics faces serious problems concerning the way it deals or fails to deal with bounded rationality the efficiency of outcomes trust innovation learning and the nature of knowledge the competence view yields an alternative perspective on the purpose and boundaries of the firm however the competence view cannot ignore issues of governance and in spite of serious criticism transaction cost economics yields some useful concepts to deal with them this paper aims to contribute to the development of theory and empirical research that connects governance and competence perspectives copyright 2004 oxford university press

the boundaries of the firm revisited why do firms exist what is their function and what determines their scope these remain the central questions in the economics of organization they are also central questions for business executives and corporate strategists the worldwide volume of corporate mergers and acquisitions exceeded 1 6 trillion in 1997 it is hard to imagine that so much time effort and investment bankers fees would be spent on adjusting firm boundaries unless there was some underlying economic gain indeed the exceptional levels of merger and acquisition activity over the past two decades are a strong indication that economically significant forces do determine organizational boundaries the study of firm boundaries originated with the famous essay by coase 1937 who raised the question of why we observe so much economic activity inside formal organizations if as economists commonly argue markets are such powerful and effective mechanisms for allocating scarce resources coase s answer was in terms of the costs of transacting in a world of imperfect information when the transaction costs of market exchange are high it may be less costly to coordinate production through a formal organization than through a market in large part thanks to the work of williamson 1975 1985 recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in coase s fundamental insight that firm boundaries can be explained by efficiency considerations our understanding of firm boundaries has been sharpened by identifying more precisely the nature and sources of transaction costs in different circumstances in the process the focus of

the theory of the firm as governance structure from choice to contract the propositions that organization matters and that it is susceptible to analysis were long greeted by skepticism by economists one reason why this message took a long time to register is that it is much easier to say that organization matters than it is to show how and why the prevalence of the science of choice approach to economics has also been an obstacle as developed herein the lessons of organization theory for economics are both different and more consequential when examined through the lens of contract this paper examines economic organization from a science of contract perspective with special emphasis on the theory of the firm

transaction cost economics in real time this paper attempts to place the theq of the boundaries of thejirm within the context of the passage of time more precisely it resurrects and places in a modem frame some of the insights of the chsical and marshallian theories of organization the modem reinterpretation of those theories centers around the capabilities view of the jirm taken together with governance costs the capabilities ofjirm and market determine the boundaries of the jirm in the short run ovw time capabilities change as firms and markets learn which implies a kind of information or knowledge cost the cost of trandewing the firm s capability to the market w vice versa these dynamic governance costs are the costs of persuading negotiating and coordinating with and teaching others they arise in the face of change notably txchnological and organizational innovation in fit they are the costs of not having the capabilities you need when you need them dynamic transaction costs provide an explanation for vertical integration that is arguably more general than those dominant in the literature in the face of uncertainty and divwgent views ofthe future common ownership of multiple stages of production is a supwior institutional arrangement for coordinating systemic change asset specrfity is neither necessary nor suffient for this to be true dynamic governance costs may also affit internal organization it may sometimes be costly in 3 terms of persuasion negotiation and teaching to create within the firm capabilities readily available on the market indeed in cases in which systemic coordination is not 4 the issue the market may turn out to be the superior institution of coordination in e 2 genwal the capabilities view of the jirm suggests that we look atfim2 and market as alternative and sometimes overlapping institutions of learning 1 transaction costs in the long rzln and the short 9 x classical and neoclassical perspectives

competence and contract in the theory of the firm abstract the coase williamson response to the question why do firms exist is based on the idea that transaction costs in viable firms are lower than they would be if production was coordinated through the market the explanatory focus of this argument is on the diminution of costs related to transactions between given individuals however this ignores the possibility of activities which are in principle non contractible including aspects of the process of production further the reliance on comparative statics in transaction cost theory downplays the distinctive kind and rate of human learning that takes place within firms this paper argues that work on organizational learning and cultural transmission reinforces a competence based explanation of the existence and relative efficiencies of firms and this approach can also provide answers to the original question posed by coase accordingly the development of a research program involving a conjoint evaluation of both competence based and transaction cost approaches is proposed

filling the institutional void the social behavior and performance of family vs non family technology firms in emerging markets family businesses fbs are said to treat their employees with unusual consideration to form a cohesive internal community they are also claimed to develop deeper more extensive connections or relationships with outside stakeholders both behaviors may increase the viability of a business intended to support an owning family and its later generations such social linkages we believe may compensate for the lack of capital product and labor institutional infrastructures in dynamic emerging economies this survey study of a most challenging emerging market sector namely korean hightechnology businesses argues three major points 1 relationships of community and connection will be more common in fbs than in non fbs 2 these relationships will enhance performance in emerging market hightechnology sectors which because of their competitive complex and everchanging nature rely on significant expert knowledge and social capital within and outside the organizational community 3 the performance of fbs will benefit more from these community and connection relationships than the performance of non fbs because in these personally intimate settings employees and external partners will be especially likely to return the generosity of a visibly active owning family or to penalize its selfishness significant empirical support was found for most of these hypotheses

more critical comments on knowledge based theories of the firm this paper continues the critique of knowledge based theories of the firm that was undertaken in foss foss n j 1996a knowledge based approaches to the theory of the firm some critical comments organ sci 7 5 470 476 specifically criticizing the reasoning in kogut and zander kogut b u zander 1996 what firms do coordination identity and learning organ sci 7 5 502 518 and conner and prahalad conner k r c k prahalad 1996 a resource based theory of the firm knowledge versus opportunism organ sci 7 5 477 501 i argue that kogut and zander kogut b u zander 1996 what firms do coordination identity and learning organ sci 7 5 502 518 attempt to explain firm organization in terms of a preference for such organization a distinctly non economic mode of explanation and that conner and prahalad fail to sufficiently characterize the nature of the firm because they identify firm organization with the employment contract and neglect asset ownership

innovation learning and industrial organisation innovation learning and organisation are analysed from a perspective which seeks to integrate evolutionary economics the resource competence view of the firm an extended theory of transaction costs and insights derived from cognitive science firms are subject to selection by competitive forces but they also adapt by organisational learning uncertainty is crucial in this and to deal with it we need a logic of abduction a heuristic to move from present competence to novel competence while surviving in the process such a heuristic is specified and some features are clarified by means of the notion of a script taken from cognitive science the heuristic is applied in an analysis of changes of industrial structure the complementarity of large and small firms the roles of multinational enterprises and industrial districts

resources access needs and capabilities as mediators of the relationship between vc firm size and syndication drawing from the resource based view and transaction costs economics we develop a theoretical framework to explain why small and large firms face different levels of resource access needs and resource access capabilities which mediate the relationship between firm size and hybrid governance employing a sample of 317 venture capital firms drawn across six european countries we empirically assess our framework in the context of venture capital syndication we estimate a path model using structural equation modeling and find consistent with our theoretical framework mediating effects of different types of resource access needs and resource access capabilities between vc firm size and syndication frequency these findings advance the small business literature by highlighting the trade offs that size imposes on firms that seek to manage their access to external resources through hybrid governance strategies