This article connects theory of learning with theory of governance, in the context of inter-firm relations. It recognizes fundamental criticism of transaction cost economics (TCE), but preserves elements from that theory. Two kinds of relational risk are identified: hold-up and spillover risk....

There is a tendency to see trust and control by formal agreements as substitutes. According to transaction cost economics trust is unreliable, and some form of control is needed to reduce hazards of opportunism. According to others, high trust allows for a limited extent of formal control....

This article studies density and strength of ties in innovation networks. It combines issues of ‘competence’ with issues of ‘governance’. It argues that in networks for exploration there are good reasons, counter to the thesis of the ‘strength of weak ties’, for a dense structure of...

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...

This article employs Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) to investigate whether, and under what conditions, trust is viable in markets. The emergence and breakdown of trust is modeled in a context of multiple buyers and suppliers. Agents develop trust in a partner as a function of observed...

This article analyses problems and solutions in thegovernance of knowledge exchange and joint knowledgeproduction. The analysis is based on a theory whichcombines elements of transaction cost economics,social exchange theory and theory of knowledge. Thetheory of knowledge yields an analysis of...

This paper is concerned with the governance of vertical interfirm relations, i.e. relations between buyers and their suppliers on industrial, intermediate-goods markets. Networks of interacting, adaptive buyers and suppliers are viewed as complex adaptive systems (Holland and Miller 1991), which...

This paper focuses on the development of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) after a management buy-out (MBO) and on the role played by venture capital firms in enhancing EO. It presents results of two exploratory case studies of divisional buy-outs with regard to their EO and the areas where the...

Moral outrage was the response of the Chinese press, when Cheng Kejie, one of the country's highest officials, Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) and former Governor of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was arrested on grounds of corruption on 25...

This paper addresses the distinction between core members and common members in farmer cooperatives in China in terms of the allocation of ownership rights, decision rights, and income rights. Empirical results from a multiple case study indicate that the life cycle and the governance...