Atmosphere, private ordering, and industrial pluralism: Williamson's evolving science of organization

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Virgile Chassagnon
Keyword(s):  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Organizational Economics ◽  
Informal Organization ◽  
Market Economies ◽  
Private Ordering ◽  
Heuristic Analysis ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Abstract The major contribution of Oliver Williamson, who was a 2009 Nobel Prize co-Laureate in economics, consists of proposing a heuristic analysis of governance structures, namely, the firm, the market, and what he will later call the ‘hybrid forms’. This cardinal issue in organizational economics has made it possible to propose rigorous arbitration tools for the famous ‘make or buy’ decisions in modern market economies based on asset specificity and quasi-rents. However, Williamson's work goes far beyond these contributions alone. His contribution is based on a multidisciplinary theoretical background in building the science of organization. This is the important but sometimes neglected aspect of Williamson's work that I wish to highlight in this paper in memory of Williamson in regard to three major pieces on atmosphere (and informal organization), private ordering, and industrial pluralism. In doing so, I also propose reconsidering the different stages of Williamson's evolving science of organization from recent neo-institutional works.

Asset specificity, intensity of coordination, and the choice of hybrid governance structures

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hildo Meirelles de Souza Filho ◽  
Bruno Varella Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Coordination Mechanisms ◽  
Negative Binomial Regression Model ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Hybrid Governance ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the existence of asset specificity and the architecture of the hybrid governance structures adopted by horticultural smallholders from the Brazilian region of Serra Fluminense. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a negative binomial regression model to analyze 567 transactions carried out by horticultural smallholders from the Brazilian region of Serra Fluminense. Starting from the insights of Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost economics, an indicator is constructed with the goal to capture the degree of intensity of coordination from the adoption of diverse bundles of coordination mechanisms in a governance structure. Findings The results show that higher levels of human and physical asset specificity affect the intensity of coordination of the transactions in the sample, leading to the adoption of hybrid forms with more complex bundles of coordination mechanisms. Research limitations/implications This paper adds to a growing literature that studies the architecture of complex governance structures. However, its empirical conclusions are exploratory. Originality/value The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, quantitative empirical studies that analyze the diversity of hybrid forms in the same industry are relatively rare. This contribution also presents a theoretical discussion that might inform scholars dealing with similar research challenges.

scholarly journals The Untranslatability of Dialects in Subtitling. An Analysis of Translation Techniques Used in the English Subtitles to The Peasants

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 295-307
Author(s):  
Anna Dudek
Keyword(s):  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Significant Barrier ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Audiovisual Translation

The aim of this research is to estimate the degree of dialect untranslatability in audiovisual translation AVT. Polish regiolects may constitute a significant barrier to interlingual transfer. The problems with non-standard varieties of a language, which are frequently incomprehensible even to native speakers of their standard counterparts, can be overcome by means of, inter alia, explanatory periphrastic substitution added to the translated text. In the method of subtitling examined in this research, however, a translation of this kind is nearly impossible due to the broadly defined aesthetics of film e.g. time and space constraints frequently applied to the mode of AVT. Therefore, this article examines the hypothesis of dual constraint, which assumes a two-fold hindrance to a successful AV dialect transfer i.e. the lack of equivalents in the target language and the aforementioned aesthetic requirements of film. The corpus of the material researched here is based on the English subtitles for the screen adaptation of Chłopi — a Nobel Prize-winning novel written by Władysław Stanisław Reymont The Peasants; PolArt Video 2006. This article provides the theoretical background for the subsequent study as well as introduces its own classification of the translation techniques applicable to this particular piece of research as well as to other AV dialect transfers. The research part focuses on the research proper. The findings are briefly summarised and conclusions are drawn.

Organizational Economics and Models of Incomplete Contracts

2007 ◽  
pp. 71-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Skorobogatov
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Incomplete Contracts ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Organizational Economics ◽  
Team Production ◽  
Specific Investment ◽  
Theoretical Results ◽  
Demand Aggregation

The article considers interrelations between economic organization and the opportunities of realizing technological advantages such as demand aggregation, team production and asset specificity. Theoretical results of incomplete contracts literature are analyzed (Hart-Moore, Grossman-Hart and Tirole-Furubotn-Richter models) which touches upon interdependence between contract incompleteness, allocation of property rights and the levels of relationship-specific investment.

scholarly journals The Secret Life of Mundane Transaction Costs

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1389-1410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard N. Langlois
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Transaction costs, one often hears, are ‘the economic equivalent of friction in physical systems’. Like physicists, economists can sometimes neglect friction in formulating theories; but like engineers, they can never neglect friction in studying how the system actually does — let alone should — work. Interestingly, however, the present-day economics of organization also ignores friction. That is, almost single-mindedly, the literature analyzes transactions from the point of view of misaligned incentives and (especially) transaction-specific assets. The costs involved are certainly costs of running the economic system in some sense, but they are not obviously ‘frictions’. Stories about frictions in trade are not nearly as intriguing as stories about guileful trading partners and expensive assets placed at risk. But I will argue that these seemingly dull categories of cost — what Baldwin and Clark call mundane transaction costs — actually have a secret life. They are at least as important as, and quite probably far more important than, the more glamorous costs of asset specificity in explaining the partition between firm and market. These costs also have a secret life in another sense: they have a secret life cycle. I will argue that these mundane transaction costs provide much better material for helping us understand how the boundaries among firms, markets, and hybrid forms change over time.

scholarly journals The institutional structure of production revisited

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRICO ROSSI
Keyword(s):  
Original Description ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Exchange Theory ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Organizational Economics ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Structure Of Production

Abstract:This paper revisits Coase's original description of the Institutional Structure of Production, and disentangles its two constitutive elements: (i) the costs of organizing an activity internally and (ii) the costs deriving from the transaction of the activity on the market. In doing so, I show transaction costs (TC) to be always necessary and sufficient to explain institutions, but only in the Slutsky–Hicks and Samuelson ordinal framework where expenditure functions replace utility functions and actors merely transact services and never control, nor own goods. Yet, if actors can purchase (and therefore control) resources, utility in use cannot be univocally deduced from purchasing behaviours; here ordinal exchange theory must be replaced by Austrian subjective cardinal value theory, where value in use and value in exchange do not coincide. To explain the allocation of activities among firms in this case, actors’ subjective opportunity costs are thus always necessary (and possibly sufficient), while TC are never sufficient. This distinction has fundamental implications for at least two main developments of Coase's original insights: the relationship among competition, socialist planning and the nature of the firm, and the reinterpretation of the Austrian concept of asset specificity in contemporary institutional and organizational economics (OE).

scholarly journals The Levels of Marketing Ethics

Ekonomika ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laima Abromaitytė-Sereikienė
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Transition Economies ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Marketing Ethics ◽  
Business Manager ◽  
Market Economies ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Corporate Social

The issue of ethics in marketing continues to be a concern for marketing practitioners and researchers. Every business manager would probably agree that ethical implications are often inherent in marketing decisions. This fact has encouraged to turn to the topic of marketing ethics and to analyze the levels of marketing ethics. As an example of differences in the levels of marketing ethics in different countries, the situation in the old free market and in transition economies is compared. Because the analysis of marketing ethics adoption in the companies of transition economies still requires much research, the purposes of the paper are to present and define the levels on which decisions of marketing ethics are made by comparing the situation in transition and old free market economies, and to fill in the gap in the literature on marketing ethics in Lithuania by defining the main tendencies in the marketing ethics adaptation in this country.To attain the objectives of the paper, it presents the development of the theory of marketing ethics and a theoretical background of the levels of marketing ethics adaptation. The levels of marketing ethics are presented in the context of motivation theories and the corporate social responsibility. The paper will also provide scenarios according to which companies meet or should meet the questions pertaining to marketing ethics in the old market and transition economies.

scholarly journals Governance structures in cooperative slaughterhouses: a study on the chain of differentiated beef in the state of Paraná

2022 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaiane Aparecida Pereira ◽  
Amanda Ferreira Guimarães ◽  
Rejane Heloise dos Santos ◽  
Sandra Mara de Alencar Schiavi ◽  
José Paulo de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Cost ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Value Distribution ◽  
The State ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Second Moment ◽  
Subjective Measurements ◽  
Market Uncertainties

Abstract: This study sought to discuss the governance structures adopted between livestock producers and their cooperative slaughterhouses in the chain of differentiated beef in the state of Paraná. The theoretical basis used was the Transaction Cost Economics and Measurement Costs Economics, complemented by the specificities of cooperatives. We conducted interviews with three key agents and eleven representatives of six cooperative slaughterhouses operating in this system. As result, we observed that the cooperatives have similar objectives and requirements, although there are differences in the levels of formality or flexibility. Although transactions are recurrent and have been successful, they involve a high asset specificity, depend on subjective measurements, and are still exposed to market uncertainties, which leaves room for the generation of conflicts and disincentives to quality. Despite this, the relational and reputational aspects associated with trust and partnership between the parties are elements that enable reduced transaction and measurement costs in these structures. At first, the measurements conducted by the cooperatives had an important role in the construction of trust between the parties and for value distribution. In a second moment, the trust built enabled the reduction of measurement costs.

scholarly journals Reflections on Phishing for Phools – The Economics of Manipulation and Deception

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Klikauer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Market Economies ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject

Abstract: Nobel Prize winning economists Akerlof and Shiller’s phishing for phools explains the economics behind mass deception and manipulation in market economies. While “phishing” is commonly known as a form of internet fraught, their book ‘takes a new, broader meaning, i.e. getting people to do things that are in the interest of the phisherman, but not in the interest of the target. A phool is someone who, for whatever reason, is successfully phished. These are emotional phools (feelings override common sense) and information phools (people act on information that is intentionally crafted to mislead them). Divided into “unpaid bills and financial crash”, “phishing in many contexts”, and “general lessons”, the book uses rafts of examples from economics, the media, and advertising to substantiate their claim. While it avoids linking their findings to capitalism, the book contains a few helpful hints when seeking to avoid being “phished as a phool”. In the end, and despite the economic analysis of the two Nobel Prize winners, the more illuminating book on the subject remains Lindstrom’s “Buyology”.

scholarly journals Transaction attributes and adoption of hybrid governance in the Brazilian cattle market

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. de Mello Brandão Vinholis ◽  
H. Meirelles de Souza Filho ◽  
M.J. Carrer ◽  
F.R. Chaddad
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Asset Specificity ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Hybrid Governance ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Cattle Market ◽  
Cattle Farms ◽  
Capital Intensive ◽  
Hybrid Forms

A transaction cost economics framework was used to test hypotheses on the alignment of transaction attributes and governance structures using data from a sample of 84 beef cattle farms in Brazil. A bivariate logit model was employed. It was found that the adoption of traceability and its certification and highly capital-intensive production systems, used here as proxies for asset specificity, plays a positive role in the choice of hybrid forms of governance.

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