The paper deals with development of a general theory of the firm. It discusses the demand for such a theory, reviews existing approaches to its generalization, and offers a new variant of general theory of the firm based on the contract theory. The theory is based on minimization of...

The paper studies through the lens of the economic theory of the firm the development of two managerial disciplines: supply chain management and relationship marketing. The author demonstrates which ideas have been borrowed by these disciplines from the economic theory of the firm, and in what...

Under the Cross-Licensing system (CL), firms are allowed to trade non cooperatively the results of R&D efforts, and compete in the innovation and production stages. First, the paper proposes a simple modeling of this system. Second, a relevant comparison is made with the Cartelized Research...

We reconsider the property rights approach to the theory of the firm based on incomplete contracts. We explore the implications of different degrees of relationship-specificity when there are two parties, A and B, who can make investments in physical capital (instead of human capital). If...

Outsourcing is one of the organizational practices that have increased in popularity over the past decade, even in the public sector. However, management control literature gives a little attention to this new form of organization. Two paradigms dominate the inter-organizational management...

The aim of this article is to identify management control archetypes in an outsourcing context and contingency factors that underlie them. The exploratory case study, carried upon three Moroccan publicly owned offices indicates that two combinations of Ouchi's (1980) management control...

We study the problem of an inventor who brings to the market an innovation that can be legally copied. Imitators may `enter' the market by copying the innovation at a cost or by buying from the inventor the knowledge necessary to reproduce and use the invention. The possibility of contracting...

We examine the appropriability problem of an inventor who brings to the market a successful innovation that can be legally copied. We study this problem in a dynamic model in which imitators can “enter” the market either by copying the invention at a cost or by buying knowledge (a license)...

A widely used clause in license contracts – the field-of-use restriction (FOUR) – precludes licensees from operating outside of the technical field specified. When a technology has several distinct applications, FOUR allow the licensor to divide up his rights and attribute them to the...

In Europe, many countries have completely separated their railways into totally separate infrastructure managers and railway undertakings (train operators) and the European Commission has sought to make such complete vertical separation a legal requirement.