language, form and theory of the firm
I think Arrow’s book The Limits of Organization is excellent. The book ought to be, though isn’t, standard reading for any budding organizational scholar. Here’s a nice piece by Cremer, Garicano and Prat (in QJE) that formalizes some of Arrow’s intuition around “organizational codes,” along with discussing implications for organizational form: “Language and the theory of the firm.” The Cremer et al piece also has some links to this excellent article (gated, jstor) by Nick Argyres on coordination in the production of B-2 bombers.
Teppo. you’ve got a bad link — the Arrow link goes to the Cremer et al. paper.
I agree on your recommendation, Arrow’s book is very important and perhaps underappreciated. Chapter 6 of Williamson’s Economic Institutions of Capitalism (1985), “The Limits of the Firm: Incentive and Bureaucratic Features,” is also worth reading in this regard. Not in the same class as Arrow and Williamson, but possibly useful, is this short piece.
Peter Klein
May 23, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Thanks Peter, I cleaned up the links. And, thanks for the link to your paper.
tf
May 23, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I really appreciated both papers. Thanks Teppo! A similar linguistic approach is presented in http://sprouts.aisnet.org/8-29/ and http://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2007/26/, although coming from an information systems perspective.
Rita Sommer
October 5, 2009 at 11:48 am