Table of Contents

Contents:

INTRODUCTION
Economic Organization as an Object of Study and as an Emerging Disciplinary Field
Anna Grandori

PART I: THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION: EXTENDING BEHAVIORAL ASSUMPTIONS ON KNOWLEDGE, INTEREST, AND RATIONALITY
1. Models of Rationality in Economic Organization: ‘Economic’, ‘Experiential’ and ‘Epistemic’
Anna Grandori

2. Motivation Governance
Margit Osterloh and Bruno S. Frey

3. Cognition and Governance: Why Incentives Have to Take a Back Seat
Siegwart Lindenberg

4. Knowledge Governance: Meaning, Origins and Implications
Nicolai J. Foss

PART II: THE CONSTITUTION OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BETWEEN INTERACTING AND CONTRACTING
5. Contracts: Coordination Across Firm Boundaries
Victor P. Goldberg

6. The Enterprise as Community: Firms, Towns, and Universities
Scott E. Masten

7. Ethics, Economic Organization and the Social Contract
Lorenzo Sacconi

8. Language and Economic Organization
Massimo Warglien

PART III: THE SHAPING OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BETWEEN DESIGN AND EVOLUTION
9. Organizational Adaptation and Evolution: Darwinism versus Lamarckism?
Geoffrey M. Hodgson

10. Exaptation and Innovation Processes: Theory and Models
Giovanni Bonifati and Marco Villani

11. Interdependence and Organization Design
Phanish Puranam and Merlo Raveendran

12. Dynamics of Organizational Structure
Nick Argyres and Todd R. Zenger

13. Design Rules for Dynamic Organization Design: The Contribution of Computational Modeling
Richard M. Burton and Børge Obel

14. Organizational Formation and Change: Lessons from Economic Laboratory Experiments
Peter H. Kriss and Roberto Weber

PART IV: HUMAN RESOURCES AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BETWEEN ASSETS AND ACTORS
15. Human Capital and Property Rights
Anna Grandori

16. The Economic Organization of Employment: Systems in Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations
Bruce E. Kaufman

17. Organization of Work Practices and Productivity: An Assessment of Research on World-class Manufacturing
Riccardo Leoni

PART V: TECHNICAL ASSETS AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BETWEEN DETERMINANTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
18. Technical Assets and Property Rights
Ugo Pagano

19. Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: Task Decomposition, Knowledge Distribution and the Locus of Innovation
Karim R. Lakhani, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Michael L. Tushman

20. Modularity and Economic Organization: Concepts, Theory, Observations, and Predictions
Ron Sanchez and Joseph T. Mahoney

21. The Organizational Design of High-tech Start-ups: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research
Massimo G. Colombo and Cristina Rossi-Lamastra

PART VI: FORMS OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION BETWEEN DISCRETE ALTERNATIVES AND COMBINATIVE CONFIGURATIONS
22. Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Governance and Economic Organization
Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein

23. The Four Functions of Corporate Personhood
Margaret M. Blair

24. Worker Cooperatives and Democratic Governance
John Pencavel

25. Internal and External Hybrids and the Nature of Joint Ventures
Jean-François Hennart

26. Interfirm Cooperatives
George Hendrikse and Li Feng

27. The Governance of Franchising Networks
Josef Windsperger

28. Subcontracting Relationships
Ruth Rama and Adelheid Holl

29. Public Economic Organization
Jan-Erik Lane

CONCLUSIONS
Integrating Economic and Organization Theory: Products, Problems and Prospects
Anna Grandori

Index

About the Author

Edited by Anna Grandori, Professor of Business Organization, Bocconi University, Italy

Reviews

’This excellent volume brings together some of the most interesting writings on economic organization. It covers a vast range of topics that fall under the heading of economic organization, and most if not all aspects of a variety of organizational economics and organization theories are presented. Interestingly, this book also extends beyond the more traditional approaches informed by economics and organization theory as it broadens the horizon of the field by including relevant contributions from economic sociology, cognitive psychology, law, and strategic management. Given its breadth and depth, this volume will become one of the standard reference books that will inspire both theoretical and empirical research.’
*John Hagedoorn, Maastricht University, The Netherlands*

‘This important new Handbook of Economic Organization is a highly successful attempt to integrate economic and organization theory. Anna Grandori, who is herself a leading scholar located at the boundaries of economics and organization theory, is to be congratulated on doing a superb job bringing together such a high profile group of internationally acknowledged scholars. Each of the essays in the book are original and contribute to demonstrating the valuable insights that economics can make to our understanding of organization and organizational design. Anna Grandori’s introductory and concluding chapters are not only excellent audits of the current state of our knowledge in this field but they also give a strong sense of direction for the possible futures of the discipline. Anna Grandori is not afraid to face head on some of the more philosophical issues relating to “organization” as an object of study and is to be commended for doing so. The economics of organization is a new, exciting and developing field and the essays in this book will help to shape the research agenda that will take this emergent discipline to its next stage.’
*Peter M. Jackson, University of Leicester, UK*

‘This sweeping, comprehensive volume is a signal effort in building bridges between economics and organization theory. With a stellar cast of contributors, it will both inspire and provoke scholars with its grand amibitions, and generate considerable attention and debate. A remarkable effort by Anna Grandori.’
*Walter W. Powell, Stanford University, US*

’Anna Grandori has astutely organized the commissioned chapters of an intellectually diverse set of scholars into an absolutely outstanding contribution that both defines the current state of organizational economics and points the perceptive reader toward an exciting intellectual future. From traditional research areas to the newest topics of interest, the chapters chart the current boundaries of the field. The chapters are filled with gems of insight across several distinct levels of analysis, whether it is a discussion of organizational design, or psychological economics or innovation or the organization as language, the discussions are contemporary, comprehensive and challenging. No serious scholar of organizational economics should be without this book.’
*Richard N. Osborn, Wayne State University, US*