This essay addresses the role of transaction cost economics (TCE) in advancing the resource-based view. In particular, it is argued that TCE has the potential to remedy a number of weak spots in the RBV, such as the absence of attention in the RBV to the interaction between value creation and...

This paper responds to Kim and Mahoney's "How Property Rights Economics Furthers the Resource-Based View: Resources, Transaction Costs and Entrepreneurial Discovery" (a comment on Foss and Foss, 2005). While we agree with many of their arguments, we argue that they fail to recognize how exactly...

Credible delegation of discretion obtains when it is a rational strategy for managers not to overrule employee decisions that are based on delegated decision rights or renege on the level of delegated discretion (and this is common knowledge). Making delegation of discretion credible becomes a...

Managers delegate the right to make decisions to employees because delegation economizes on scarce managerial attention, fosters the use of local knowledge, and positively impacts employee motivation. This is particularly important in knowledge-intensive organizations that operate in uncertain...

We describe and discuss Ronald Coase's approach to managerial authority, placing it in the broader context of recent economics and management research on intrafirm coordination. To do so, we make use of work by Coase that is relatively little known, namely his writings on opportunity cost...

A central construct in competitive strategy research is market power, the ability to raise price above marginal cost. Positioning research focuses on attempts to build, protect, and exercise market power. However, this approach contains hidden assumptions about transaction costs. Parties made...