Read more
This book offers a distinctive analysis of the relations and interplay between the internal activities of firms, their changing boundaries, and increasing reliance on networks and alliances with other firms.
The contributors offer a blend of theoretical and empirical studies; they are based on a set of related perspectives in modern economics, including transaction cost economics, competence and resource-based theories of the firm, evolutionary economics and the theories of foreign direct investments and the multinational enterprise. The unifying concern shared by the different studies is the need to model firm behaviour and inter firm cooperative activities in terms of knowledge growth and competence building rather than merely in terms of cost-reduction; they emphasize learning processes and dynamic efficiency rather than efficient allocation of given resources.
List of contents
Preface 1 Some introductory reflections PART I Alliance capitalism? 2 Reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism 3 On knowledge and power in the theory of the firm 4 Blurring boundaries: new inter-firm relationships and the emergence of networked, knowledge-based oligopolies PART II Joint ventures, alliances, and hierarchical integration 5 The evolution of collaborative activity in the firm 6 Testing theories of joint ventures: Why Japanese investors in the United States choose joint ventures over acquisitions 7 A simultaneous equations model of technological agreements and infra-mural R&D 8 Technological change and vertical integration: Analysis of international vertical integration in multinational companies PART III Supply relations 9 Cost, quality, and learning based governance of buyer-supplier relations 10 Japanese 'transplant' supplier relations: are they transferable? Should they be? 11 Customer-subcontractor relationships
About the author
Massimo G. Colombo is Full Professor of Applied Economics at the Università di Pavia. He is also Professor of Economics of Technical Change at the Politecnico di Milano. He is the author of numerous publications in the fields of industrial economics, economics of innovation and the theory of the firm in established international journals.
Summary
This book offers a distinctive analysis of the relations and interplay between the internal activities of firms, their changing boundaries and increasing reliance on networks and alliances with other firms.
