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Abstract:
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Assumptions about the knowledge held by economic agents have been an integral part of
the theory of economic organization since its inception. However, recent work—here
called “knowledge governance”—has more explicitly highlighted knowledge as both an
independent and dependent variable. Thus, a spate of work in management research and
new institutional economics has highlighted dimensions such as complementarity,
complexity, tacitness, and so on of knowledge assets and shown how knowledge assets,
thus dimensionalized, has explanatory value with respect to economic organization.
However, knowledge may also be seen as being caused by governance mechanisms and
structures; specifically, incentives, allocations of decision rights, organizational structure
and so on influence the search for knowledge, and the creation, sharing and integration of
knowledge. More philosophically, the concern with the role of knowledge in the context
of economic organization prompts a reevaluation of a number of the fundamental
assumptions that are often used to guide theory-building in the economics of organization
(e.g., Bayesian and game theoretical foundations). |
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