Greetings:
The below Organization Science (special issue) call for papers
explicitly touches on cognition-related matters and thus may be of
interest to scholars working in this area.
Best regards,
Teppo
CALL FOR PAPERS
Organization Science special issue ---
Organizational Economics and Organizational Capabilities: From
Opposition and Complementarity to Real Integration
Guest Editors
Nicholas Argyres – Washington University in St. Louis
Teppo Felin – Brigham Young University
Nicolai Foss – Copenhagen Business School
Todd Zenger – Washington University in St. Louis
Introduction and Motivation
Two broad strands of literature have emerged as particularly central
to organizational strategy and the theory of the firm: organizational
economics and the capability (or resource-based) literature. While
organizational economics highlights organizational efficiency and has
clear implications for the organization of transactions, it has been
criticized for saying very little about organizational heterogeneity
and therefore (sustainable) performance differences. Meanwhile, the
capabilities literature has been lauded as a theory of organizational
heterogeneity and sustainable performance differences, but criticized
for an inability to address the organizational forms and governance
arrangements that create these capability differences.
The discussion and debate between these two literatures has persisted
for at least fifteen years and seems to have evolved through three
distinct stages: 1) opposition ⎯ with scholars arguing that
organizational economics and the capability literature are
fundamentally different and even opposed; 2) complementarity ⎯ with
scholars arguing that the respective theories deal with distinct but
complementary aspects of organization and strategy; and 3) emerging
integration ⎯ an emerging stage in which some scholars now argue that
the two views are more than complementary and that they can genuinely
be integrated. However, despite the promise of this integration, the
two literatures continue to be juxtaposed rather than meaningfully
integrated.
The purpose and explicit goal of this special issue, then, is to
encourage and highlight work that effectively and systematically
integrates the organizational economics and organizational
capabilities-based literatures. Overall, we submit that significantly
deeper integration of these two literatures will lead to important
insights into organizational behavior, particularly the relationships
between various organizational and inter-organizational forms and
arrangements on the one hand, and capability building processes and
outcomes on the other.
To illustrate potential links between organizational economics and the
capabilities-based literature, several areas seem promising. For
example, capability development and resource acquisition fundamentally
are decisions related to organizational boundaries ⎯ and, these
decisions might be better understood if integrated with insights from
transaction cost and property rights theories. Furthermore,
capability development also implicates matters of governance; thus, a
key opportunity for future research is to explicate effective
governance forms and organizational designs and decision-making
structures for capability development. Much work is also needed on
the emergence of new organizational forms, and the role of
transactions in capability development in entrepreneurial settings.
Moreover, organizational capabilities may be developed through
alliances and other inter-organizational relationships, and
organizational economics and the capabilities literatures can further
be integrated to generate key insights about these governance forms as
well.
Numerous other areas also suggest that the integration of these
literatures might yield important insights. For example, a central
part of organizational capabilities is human capital. The sourcing of
human capital services and, for example, how such services are called
forth by organizational incentives suggests that some promising
insights might be gained from further integrating agency theory and
other theories of motivation with the capabilities literature.
Furthermore, understanding central issues related to human capital
may help us to better understand the patterns of rent appropriation
associated with capability development and organizational performance.
Importantly, insights from psychology, social psychology and
organizational behavior should also help us further understand the
nexus of organizational boundaries and the development of
capabilities.
In all, these matters seem to call for work that goes significantly
beyond merely contrasting or juxtaposing organizational economics and
capabilities-based views. This special issue, then, is a direct call
for research that meaningfully integrates the two perspectives in an
effort to better understand organizational design, organizational
behavior and performance.
Key Questions and Themes
Integrating organizational economics and capabilities-based ideas may
proceed from research questions that are theory as well as
phenomena-driven:
Theory-driven Research Questions:
• How is a theoretical view of organizational capability
development enhanced by understanding the governance of transactions?
• Is transacting itself a learned capability?
• How does the transacting capability evolve? How is it developed
by the firm?
• What organizational forms and associated decision-making
structures best govern knowledge creation and capability development?
• What insights from organization theory might help us meaningfully
bridge and extend economic and capabilities-based reasoning? For
example, what organizational designs and forms might help us further
understand organizational boundaries and capabilities?
• What possible extensions are needed to transaction cost
economics, specifically to better understand capability development?
• What insights from psychology or organizational behavior might
help us understand organizational boundary decisions as they relate to
organizational capabilities?
• Where do transactions come from? If transactions are taken as
given, where do alternatives and understandings about transactions
come from?
• What role does cognition and learning play at the nexus of
organizational economics and capability development?
• Where do new organizational capabilities come from? How are new
markets created and how do transactions and property rights play into
this type of new capability development?
• How are subjective perceptions about asset specificity aggregated
in nascent organizations? What is the relationship between asset
specificity and capability development in new markets?
• What organizational forms best capitalize on the development of
capabilities in new markets? How are activities related to new
capability development governed?
• What is the relationship between human capital, organizational
boundaries and organizational capability development?
• Can concepts of fit and complementarity (from the capability
literature) be related to, and integrated with, concepts of asset
specificity and co-specialization (from organizational economics)?
• What insights from information economics might enhance our
understanding of organizational capabilities and knowledge production?
For example, information asymmetries abound both across and within
firms, how do these impact the development of capabilities and the
creation and governance of knowledge?
Phenomena-driven Research Questions:
• What is the relationship between firm boundary decisions and
capability development? For example, while interfirm networks have
been highlighted as central to (or the locus of) capability
development, what are the relevant boundaries of the firm and how is
capability development implicated? Do organizational boundaries
matter?
• What are the underlying sources of firm heterogeneity from a
transaction cost point of view? For example, different firms may face
different costs of transacting; how does this influence their sourcing
decisions and their processes of building capabilities? Can (some
types of) heterogeneity be traced to transaction costs?
• What is the role of contracts in capability development?
• What is the role of contracts and associated transactions in
highly dynamic and uncertain environments?
• How do theories of organizational capability and heterogeneity
need to evolve to account for increased globalization, increased
access to information technology, and the increased moves to knowledge
work?
• How do theories of the firm and capability development need to
evolve given increased organizational disaggregation?
• How do property rights impact capability development or knowledge
production?
• What role does knowledge accumulation play in capability
development, boundaries, and the theory of the firm?
• What is the role of decision-making structures in capability
development? For example, how do insights from agency or
organizational theories help us understand the critical decisions
related to the development of capabilities?
The above questions are meant to be illustrative, though not
comprehensive, of the types of questions that we hope are explored in
this special issue. Also, we are interested in both theoretical work
and all varieties of method: econometric, ethnographic, historical,
formal modeling and simulation.
Submissions:
Manuscripts for this special issue of Organization Science may be
submitted between October 1, 2009 and October 30, 2009. Manuscript
submission is handled electronically via Manuscript Central:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgsci.
Conference:
After the first round of review, the authors of the most promising
manuscripts will be invited to a special issue conference. (Additional
conference details will be provided later.)
Guest Editor contact information:
Nicholas Argyres –
argyres@wustl.edu
Teppo Felin –
teppo.felin@byu.edu
Nicolai Foss –
njf.smg@cbs.dk
Todd Zenger –
zenger@wustl.edu