Discusses the economic contributions of George Barclay Richardson. Detailing the Austrian and Marshallian aspects of his work, argues that all his contributions – on industrial organization, welfare economics, history of thought, etc. – are united in their concern with the co-ordination...

This Introduction discusses the contrast between, on the one hand, the current popularity of addressing MNC organization in knowledge terms and, on the other, the lack of adequate understanding of many of the causal mechanisms and contextual factors in relations between knowledge processes and...

The article compares alternative approaches to the theory of the firm. The two main approaches confronted are the contractual (Coasian) perspective and the competence (evolutionary) perspective. Whereas, the firma as a repository of tacit knowledge is neglected in the contractual perspectives,...

Recent work on multinational enterprises (MNEs) argues that diversity in terms of the markets they serve and the environments they acquire inputs from provides strategic opportunity unavailable to purely domestic firms. However, MNEs are also exposed to higher levels of complexity and...

The knowledge-based approach and organizational economics are usually seen as offering opposing approaches to the explanation of organizational phenomena. Relying on a taxonomic framework from the philosophy of science, we argue that many differences between these approaches are more apparent...

Proponents of the emerging knowledge-based (resource-based, competence-based, etc.) theory of the firm have subjected more traditional economics of organization theories to strong critiques. Rather than directly answering this critique, we examine key ideas of the knowledge-based approach, and...

Proponents of the knowledge-based approach to the firm argue that organizational economics put all the burden on the allocation of incentives and property rights in the explanation of organizational phenomena, and neglects firm-specific knowledge and processes of learning. We argue that there is...