CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 3,078Economic Theory and InstitutionsManagement and Organizational StudiesInnovation and Knowledge Management

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 59 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

What Firms Do? Coordination, Identity, and Learning

Kogut, Bruce, Zander, Udo·1996·Organization Science
DOI 10.1287/orsc.7.5.502
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Firms are organizations that represent social knowledge of coordination and learning. But why should their boundaries demarcate quantitative shifts in the knowledge and capability of their members? Should not knowledge reside also in a network of interacting firms? This line of questioning presents the challenge to state an alternative view to the “theory of the firm,” a theory that has moved from Coase's early treatment of what firms do to a concern with ownership, incentives, and self-interest. We return to Coase's original insight in understanding the cost and benefits of a firm but based on a view that individuals are characterized by an “unsocial sociality.” Does the perception of opportunism generate the need to integrate market transactions into the firm, or do boundaries of the firm lead to the attribution of opportunism? This basic dichotomy between self-interest and the longing to belong is the behavioral underpinning to the superiority of firms over markets in resolving a fundamental dilemma: productivity grows with the division of labor but specialization increases the costs of communication and coordination. The knowledge of the firm has an economic value over market transactions when identity leads to social knowledge that supports coordination and communication. Through identification, procedural rules are learned, and coordination and communication are facilitated across individuals and groups of diverse specialized competence. A firm is distinct from a market…

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1287/orsc.7.5.502

Cites

58 of 58 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Show all 59 references

1 of the 59 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 401–500 of 1,001

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Kogut, B., & Zander, U.
Affiliations
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • Stockholm School of Economics (SE)
ORCID
Venue
Organization Science
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Published
1996-10
Volume
7
Issue
5
Pages
502-518
ISSN
  • 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-5455
DOI
10.1287/orsc.7.5.502
OpenAlex
W2102435235
Cited by
3,078
References
59
Citations by year
2026: 34 · 2025: 51 · 2024: 53 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 73 · 2021: 79 · 2020: 121 · 2019: 108 · 2018: 118 · 2017: 115 · 2016: 127 · 2015: 134 · 2014: 151 · 2013: 182 · 2012: 178
FWCI
65.42
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Organization Science (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic Theory and Institutions
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Innovation and Knowledge Management
Keywords
theory of the firm, firm boundaries, social knowledge, organizational identity, coordination, learning, opportunism, division of labor, market versus firm, procedural justice, prisoner's dilemma, organizational coherence, sociality, communication overhead, creativity and innovation, Ronald Coase, moral consistency, complementarity

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review