Diversification, Industry Structure, and Firm Strategy: An Organizational Economics Perspective

摘要: Ronald Coase's landmark 1937 article, “The Nature of the Firm,” framed study organizational economics for decades. Coase asked three fundamental questions: Why do firms exist? What determines their boundaries? How should be organized internally? To answer first question, famously appealed to “the costs using price mechanism,” what we now call transaction or contracting costs, a concept that blossomed in 1970s and 1980s into an elaborate theory why exist (Alchian & Demsetz, 1972; Williamson, 1975, 1979, 1985; Klein, Crawford, Alchian, 1978; Grossman Hart, 1986). The second question has generated huge literature industrial economics, strategy, corporate finance, organization theory. “Why,” as (1937, pp. 393–394) put it, “does entrepreneur not organize one less more?” In Williamson's (1996, p. 150) words, “Why can't large firm everything collection small can As recognized 1937, transaction-cost advantages internal are unlimited, have finite “optimum” size shape. Describing these limits detail proved challenging, however.1