Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- About this Book -- Contents -- Prologue -- References -- Increasing Inequality -- References -- The Failure to Predict the Great Recession -- References -- Why Fiscal Austerity? -- References -- Rolling Back the Welfare State -- References -- The State and the Market -- References -- The Gigantic German Trade Surplus and the Euro -- References -- Crisis Policy -- References -- Environmental Degradation -- References -- Industrial Policies -- References -- Afterword -- Glossary -- References -- Index.

Firms in market economies vary enormously in size, nature and competitiveness. In this important contribution to the literature on the theory of the firm, Mario Morroni provides a new analytical framework which improves our understanding of the causes of this diversity in organisational design and performance. The relations between internal and external basic conditions, decision-making mechanisms and organisational coordination are addressed, as are the circumstances in which capabilities, transactions and scale-scope considerations interact. With the emergence of the knowledge-based economy and the increasing pressure of global competition, the development of capabilities is acquiring ever greater importance in boosting competitiveness. Morroni shows that long-term relational agreements enhance learning processes and offer powerful tools for improving competitiveness in a context of conflicting interests, incomplete knowledge, and uncertainty.

This book, first published in 1992, attempts to unify the economic analysis of the production process in order to understand the effects of technical change. It is both an analytical representation of the production process, taking into account the temporal, organizational, and qualitative dimensions of production, and a fact-finding model for studying the economic effects of technical change. The inclusion of temporal and organizational aspects allows the author to examine the analytical implications of research on the nature of firms and the characteristics of technical change, whilst the model is used to analyse technical changes that involve variations of scale or degrees of flexibility. This book deals with themes much discussed in research in industrial economics and management studies and is an important contribution to bringing these two areas of research closer together, providing a general framework for the study of production processes

In recent years, applied studies have shown widespread, profound and increasing heterogeneity across firms in terms of their strategy, organization arrangement and performance. This book investigates the diversity of business firms, offering a picture of the different organizational settings they adopt in their endeavour to cope with increasing competitive pressure