Transcript Theories of the Firm

Theories of the Firm - or Frameworks ?
JC Spender
LUSEM & ESADE
questions
• what are organizations ? why do they exist ?
• what do managers do ?
• unelected - to be held responsible as citizens ?
• management education & research methods ?
• ‘horses for courses’
• several possible discourses
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functional
power, capitalist ethos, professionalization
emancipation, opportunity, human flourishing
economic functioning - orgs/markets
K-generative/value chain, endogenous,
entrepreneurship
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Lund ToF Seminar
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uncertainty - agency - rhetoric - responsibility
• Knightian uncertainty
• Lockean model of the individual (MoI)
– reason + imagination
• rationality vs agency
• methodology issues - theory vs framework
• framing the agentic space
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Barnard
Porter
PAT
• constrained maximization - Bentham
• theory of the employment situation
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subordination & manipulation
• responsibility, business ethics
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Lund ToF Seminar
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theories of employment
(Etzioni)
coercive
tyranny
cultural
oath
calculative
“employment”
market
nexus of contracts
rational-expectations
Coase - subordination
principal-agent theory
transaction cost - governance
Barnard - executive contribution
Simon - docility
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Lund ToF Seminar
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theories of the firm - or are they frameworks ?
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bureaucracy
system
organism
culture
psychic prison
CMS
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resource dependence
new institutional theory
population ecology
self-organizing
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principal-agent
transaction cost
team production, property rights
IO / 5-forces / RBV
people
things
elements
PAT
RBV/IO/5F
entities
TCE
TP/PR
decomposable systems
Simon (PAPS 1962)
Penrose 1959
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Lund ToF Seminar
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Barnardian framework
social
physical
personal
executive function
“organizational system” - meta-discourse
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Lund ToF Seminar
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Porterian - framework
confidence level
customers
new entrants
value chain /
rent stream
competitors
substitutes
suppliers
methodological illustration
bases of mkt power in strategic group
managerial choice
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Lund ToF Seminar
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principal-agent ... NOT agency
Jensen & Meckling
• agency costs
– monitoring
– bonding
– residual loss
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single period - time-less
single dimension/resource
incentive design
Rational Man
determinative
BUT - logical error **
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Mitnick, Fama, White
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‘managing’ - versus - ‘risk bearing’
risks distributed
ex-post & reputational measures
multiple periods - time-full
multiple dimensions (financial, social
and human capital)
• Learning & Trusting MoI
• non-determinative
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determined vs agentic action
independent &
dependent variables
primacy of analysis
I2
I1
I3
D
D = f (I1-n) + ε
managing causes to
control effects
C2
C1
interactive / under-determined
open space action
non-objective constraints
primacy of Q = agency/experience
C3
O = f (C1-n) * Q
Schumpeter, agent as cause
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(a) selecting field of action
(b) put in motion
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ToF as Framework
sole entrepreneur
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distributed agency
factor Q
all one can say - without a
theory of judgment
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what managers cannot do for
themselves
co-option and mutuality
Tarde, Bales
Penrose ‘mgt team’
managing - the rhetorical shaping of others’
agentic action - docility (Simon, Freud)
Organization Man (Whyte 1956)
Balanced Scorecard
casework
empirical research
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post-Enlightenment theory of the self - my MoI
individuality
rationality
imagination
docility
memory
emotion
learning
sociability
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Lund ToF Seminar
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methodology & managing
theory - positivist
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finding a theory
discovery of facts
analysis
rational decision-making
control & measurement
objective & irresponsible
deductive
inductive
agentic
evolutionary
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framework - agentic
• managerial choice
• in-the-world of experienced
contingent constraints
• judging possibilities, augenblick
• promoting watchful & learning
activity
• responsibility
• case-work & historical method
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Lund ToF Seminar
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agentic/open
instrumental/closed
elements
PAT
RBV
entities
TCE/5F
TP/PR
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