John Commons's organizational theory of institutions: a discussion

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARD CHAVANCE

Abstract:The paper discusses John R. Commons's original theory of institutions, where the latter are defined as going concerns and their working rules, or collective action restraining and expanding individual action. Such organizational approach of institutions makes important contributions to institutional economics in general, through its notion of a hierarchy of collective action, its threefold typology of transactions, and its holindividualist stance. Commons's genuine advances are counterbalanced by theoretical limits, which illustrate the unfinished character of his attempt to make a contribution to a ‘rounded-out theory of Political economy’, e.g. the ambiguous place of markets in his theory, the state understood as a model for other going concerns and, distinctly, the restricted definition of institutions as organizations. In some important respects, his theory complements or goes further than other currents of institutional economics; its weak points are sometimes the reverse side of his very contributions.

Author(s):  
Emek Yıldırım

By the 1980s and 1990s, neoliberal policies such as privatizations and deregulations transforming the minimal state model to regulative state model from the Keynesian social welfare state system made some structural and functional changes in the state mechanism, and the public administration has been in the first place due to the changing relationship between the state and the market. In fact, within this context, the new institutional economics (NIE) had a remarkable influence upon the debates upon the altering role of the state. Hence, the transformation of the state in this regard also revealed the argumentations on the governance paradigm along with the doctrinaire contributions of the new institutional economics. Therefore, this chapter will discuss the transformation of the state and the political economy of the governance together with a critical assessment of the new institutional economics in the public administration.


2020 ◽  
pp. 027614672097372
Author(s):  
Raymond Benton

Marketing in general can have greater influence if a new, yet old, perspective on marketing is adopted—something akin to the original orientation of marketing. Adopting George Fisk’s definition of marketing and marrying it with notions derived from the institutional economist Karl Polanyi is proposed. The histories of marketing thought and of institutional economics are reviewed to demonstrate their affinity and similar origins. Fisk’s conceptualization of marketing as societies’ provisioning systems is shown to correspond with Polanyi’s conceptualization of economies as instituted processes, admitting more than the market and the state as ways economies have historically and cross-culturally integrated with society. The obsolete marketing mentality is that marketers, including macromarketers, are overly fixated on the market and ignore or overlook alternatives. The Fisk/Polanyi orientation will attract macromarketers interested in marketing and development, critical marketing, sustainability, alternative economies, and those interested in the long-term prospects of macromarketing. Adopting this old, but new, framework will connect the past with the future, permit macromarketers make a mark on a larger intellectual landscape and serve to invite scholars in this larger landscape to engage with macromarketing.


1979 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dudley Jackson

During the last few inflation-ridden years many countries have experienced a severe crisis of industrial relations as workers tried, through collective action, to preserve their living standards against the pressure of rising prices. But Tanzania stands as a conspicuous example of one country where, during the 1970s, strikes seem virtually to have disappeared, as may be seen from Table I.1 It is true that the Tanzanian definition of a strike excludes disputes lasting less than one day; and it is also true that there have been occasions since 1972 when workers have ‘downed tools’ for brief protest periods. But the lack of reported strikes in Tanzania is not a statistical illusion. The Labour Officers of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare keep a close watch on the state of industrial relations, and these occurrences are known to and are reported by them, as is shown by their recording of three strikes in 1977. This last fact also demonstrates that strikes can still occur in Tanzania.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-158
Author(s):  
Adem Levent

Political economy, which developed as a study of wealth and ethics on the basis of the natural law philosophy and the British utilitarian philosophy which is a branch of natural law philosophy, has turned into economics with the marginalist revolution. The marginalist revolution has aimed at scientific “certainity” as in natural sciences, by excluding the concepts of class, institutions and history. This transformation gave the discipline a mature scientific theory appearance instead of a loose social theory form. This transformation is also consistent with the liberal character of the discipline. With that transformation, economics, on one hand, gained the most powerful scientific form among social sciences and on the other hand, it narrowed its borders. Institutional economics, one of the schools of heterodox economics, is seriously opposed to the transformation of the discipline. Both by choosing capitalism as an analysis object and by staying apart from or critical towards this capitalism institutional economics judges the liberal nature of formal economics. Institutional economics considers the economy as an institutionalized process. It accepts the market as given not natural. Economics also covers a wider area than the market. In this case, according to institutional economics, the definition of economics as science will expand and change. Economics will move away from the narrow patterns of scientific economics and reappear as political economy. In this study, it is claimed that conceiving institutional economics as political economy constitutes an opportunity to evaluate contemporary capitalism and to understand the basic tendencies of the this capitalism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 102452942096552
Author(s):  
Pascale Massot

The minimalist, atomistic classical liberal definition of markets is dominant in the global political economy literature, if often implicitly so. But major shifts are occurring in the 21st century, including China’s rise, which highlight the deficiencies of this definition and challenge us to develop fresh tools to conceptualize global markets. There are three ways in which China’s emergence challenges established market conceptualizations: the continued resilience of China’s authoritarian state-led capitalist economic model, China’s positioning around notions of power and fairness in the global economy, and China’s mixed preferences regarding global markets. The study of China’s rise, far from only impressing upon us how different China is, shines a light on dynamics that are prevalent everywhere, yet suffer from a lack of attention. This paper argues that the political economy literature is limiting the development of richer conceptualizations of the market because it operates within three conceptual ‘straitjackets’: the notion of the pure market as ideal- type, the state-market dichotomy and the notion of a sequential progression towards a market economy. The fact that markets are an underdefined concept deprives us of useful tools for elucidating important questions about markets in the global economy and limits our capacity to evaluate China’s impact on global markets. Drawing from diverse literatures, from comparative politics, to classical political economy and economic sociology, this paper develops an institutionally grounded set of tools, including a list of characteristics and a typology, to define, evaluate and compare markets, and inspire others to contribute to the endeavour.


2009 ◽  
pp. 110-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Moskovsky

The author analyzes the state of institutional economics in contemporary Russia. It is characterized by arbitrary confusion of the ideas of «old», «new» and «mathematical» versions of institutionalism which results in logical inconsistency and even eclectics to be observed in the literature. The new and mathematical versions of institutionalism are shown to be based on legal, political and mathematical determinism tightly connected with the so-called «economic approach» (G. Becker). The main attention is paid to the discussion of theoretical and practical potential of the contemporary classical («old») institutionalism. The author focuses on its philosophical grounds and its technological imperative, the institution of science, the method of criticism, the opportunity of using classical institutionalist ideas as the ideology of economic reforms in Russia.


EDUKASI ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendra Karianga

Sources of revenue and expenditure of APBD (regional budget) can be allocated to finance the compulsory affairs and optional affairs in the form of programs and activities related to the improvement of public services, job creation, poverty alleviation, improvement of environmental quality, and regional economic growth. The implications of these policies is the need for funds to finance the implementation of the functions, that have become regional authority, is also increasing. In practice, regional financial management still poses a complicated issue because the regional head are reluctant to release pro-people regional budget policy, even implication of regional autonomy is likely to give birth to little kings in region causing losses to state finance and most end up in legal proceedings. This paper discusses the loss of state finance and forms of liability for losses to the state finance. The result of the study can be concluded firstly,  there are still many differences in giving meaning and definition of the loss of state finace and no standard definition of state losses, can cause difficulties. The difficulty there is in an effort to determine the amount of the state finance losses. The calculation of state/regions losses that occur today is simply assessing the suitability of the size of the budget and expenditure without considering profits earned by the community and the impact of the use of budget to the community. Secondly, the liability for losses to the state finance is the fulfillment of the consequences for a person to give or to do something in the regional financial management by giving birth to three forms of liability, namely the Criminal liability, Civil liability, and Administrative liability.Keywords: state finance losses, liability, regional finance.


Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall

Earlier chapters of this book found that the Hobbesian hypothesis is false; the Lockean proviso is unfulfilled; contemporary states and property rights systems fail to meet the standard that social contract and natural property rights theories require for their justification. This chapter assesses the implications of those findings for the two theories. Section 1 argues that, whether contractarians accept or reject these findings, they need to clarify their argument to remove equivocation. Section 2 invites efforts to refute this book’s empirical findings. Section 3 discusses a response open only to property rights theorists: concede this book’s empirical findings and blame government failure. Section 4 considers the argument that this book misidentifies the state of nature. Section 5 considers a “bracketing strategy,” which admits that observed stateless societies fit the definition of the state of nature, but argues that they are not the relevant forms of statelessness today. Section 6 discusses the implications of accepting both the truth and relevance of the book’s findings, concluding that the best response is to fulfil the Lockean proviso by taking action to improve the lives of disadvantaged people.


Author(s):  
Adam Bodіuk

The subject of the study is the mechanism for determining the fiscal fee forthe main transportation of hydrocarbon goods as a resource concept. The purposeof this article is to justify the nature and prospects of using, instead of currentrent, hydrocarbon fiscal-main income as a fiscal payment, which is brought intothe state budget by operators of the main hydrocarbon-transport system as business entities for their transportation of hydrocarbons and products of their processing through main pipelines appropriate to the economic requirements. Theresearch methodology is determined by a combination of methods: a) cognition:legal analysis (study of the regulatory framework for the use of rent); b) justification: abstract logical analysis (definition of the concepts of hydrocarbon fiscalmain income); c) generalization (substantiation of conclusions and proposals).Results of work. In the process of analyzing the regulatory legal acts that regulate the use of current annuity as payment to the budget for the main transportation of hydrocarbons, it was established that it is not a tax in the interpretationof PKU, since the essence does not meet the official definition of tax, does notmeet the accepted definition of the concept of rent. The accepted nature andmechanism of paying rent for the transportation of hydrogen resources and associated revenues of the state and users of the main hydrogen transport systemand the unpromising nature of its use as a fiscal payment are analyzed. Conclusions.It is proposed that the state pay for the territorial pumping of hydrocarbon resources according to our triple principle as hydrocarbon fiscal-main income, whichcorresponds to its essence, and accordingly change the mechanism for calculatingand depositing funds to treasury accounts. Since the funds come to the revenueside of the state budget, that is, inherently belong to state revenue. The creationof such a mechanism needs certain studies, justifications and government decisions. The same applies to land use, since the quality indicators of soils, wherethe laid pipelines are territorially different. In addition, there is a process ofchanging land for its intended purpose, for the property. The fee for movinghydrocarbon resources should be calculated depending on the type of transport,including pipelines, for a set of indicators: quantity and quality of goods, time,main tariffs and distance of its movement. The amount may be adjusted usingfactors officially established by the CMU. Since the pipelines are located in territorial lands, part of this fee should be transferred to the territorial local budgets.Theoretically, the economic use of trunk pipelines should be considered as a typeof economic environmental management. Therefore, this type of government revenue should be determined by a set of indicators, as well as taking into account the economic interests of business entities authorized by the CMU. Thus, theimplementation of our proposed fiscal payment is relevant, has scientific noveltyand promising practical significance, therefore, for state recognition it is proposedto include it in the Tax Code of Ukraine.


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