Book Description
Business firms around the world are experimenting with new organizational designs, changing their formal architectures, their routines and processes, and their corporate cultures as they seek to improve their current performance and their growth prospects. In the process they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold. In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner. The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology. Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts on business strategy and organization, The Modern Firm provides new insights into the changes going on in business today and will be of interest to academics, students and managers alike. The Modern Firm was the Economist Best Business Book of the Year 2004.
Customer Reviews:
A succint summary of today's management dilemas.......2006-10-15
The modern firm debates around the theme of organisation of companies.
Though not a long book it is rigorous and densely written taking more
time to read than just flipping through the pages.
The book has a simple structure in 7 chapters. The first two chapters
are a mere introduction to the book and to some general concepts. 3
and 4 are devoted to the core theory, and the last 3 are the practical
examples.
The two main topics of the book are: the nature and purpose of the firm
and the motivation of the firm. The first, discusses from a variety
of perspectives what is traditionally known as "make-or-buy", should
the company be more or less integreated; relating to the agency
problem and the Coase-theorem. Prof. Roberts does not give any
solution but a framework to decide depending on each ones case. Since
some activities cannot be externalised in a simple manner, the second
tackles the issue of motivation, exposing the main factors to be
accounted into motivating employees and linking those to the design of
a firm structure.
5 and 6 are the practical part of the book where the author divides
companies in two camps: those organised for performance and those
organised for growth. Whilst there are not that many examples nor
statistical relevant data, the author makes a strong point that both
goals cannot be achieved with the same structure since control
mechanisms, goal-setting, etc. might be completely different in each
onset. The last chapter reminds the role of management in the decision on
structure and its reponsibility.
The book manages in its last chapters to make a good balance between
readibility and structure analysis to bring its points home. Readers
prefering a more scholastic view on the subjects of chapters 3 and 4
might prefer a book like "Economics of Strategy" from Dranove et al.
Stunning Perspective.......2006-04-15
This book nicely mixes perspectives from economics, organization theory, and strategic management. The writing style is lucid and accessible, unlike many books by academics. It is clear that Dean Roberts has been thinking about these issues for many years.
Even though he was trained as a classical economist, he seems to have shed some of the baggage that the neoclassical paradigm imposes. That is important to the relevance of his ideas in this age of the resource-based view of the firm (see the collected readings edited by Nicolai J. Foss), the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation (Schumpeterian/Austrian economics), and evolutionary economics (An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change by Richard Nelson and Sid Winter, 1982).
In contrast to the traditional notion that firms within an industry are homogeneous and compete only on price, a stream of empirical research going back to 1991 (Richard P. Rumelt in Strategic Management Journal) has found that rates of return vary more within industries than across them. That makes the case for heterogeneity, not homogeneity. It also speaks to the importance of differentiation among firms. Most important, it opens up the discussion to such vital topics as a firm's unique capabilities, its routines, its culture, and its architecture, all of which Dean Roberts addresses in this remarkable book.
His perspective is not the final one, of course. What we know about that miraculous black box called the firm continues to evolve. But Dean Roberts has made a stunning contribution to what we know. In our own work valuing private equity, we use key precepts of this book every day. I recommend The Modern Firm without hesitation or qualification.
good for beginners.......2006-02-22
Roberts presents a useful primer on the modern business firm. In particular the chapter on "The Nature and Purpose of the Firm" gives a solid overview of the standard arguments and theories. The problem is that by sticking so closely to standard thinking Roberts misses an opportunity to broaden the discussion about what we call the firm. For instance: he hints at a disatisfaction at the severe limitations neo-classical economics places on anyone trying to integrate business strategy with broader economic theory [e.g. his brief critique of Alchian and Demsetz], but then quickly falls into line and refuses to break ranks with it. As a result the book becomes more a review of business school case studies than an attempt to theorize about the firm.
Even with this criticism the book is worth reading: because it is a solid introduction it highlights just how far we have to go to get a theory that can tie in with practise.
Rich Compendium of Contemporary Management Theory.......2005-10-29
This work sums up most of the salient advances in management theory and microeconomics of the last decade. Before you read it, you should have some understanding of game theory and strategic management, otherwise you may miss the significance of the arguments put forward. For the prepared reader this book is a compendium of thinking on creative management at the cutting edge of this discipline.
I have the habit of marking my books in two ways. First; I highlight passages to make important concepts easier to find again. Second; I mark my books with tags so that the most important of these can be accessed rapidly without having to page through the volume. The exercise of thinking about the choices I shall make for highlighting and tagging is a way of helping to consolidate the material in my memory; and - ironically - this exercise at times makes the highlighting and tagging redundant.
Now, what am I to do when the book is so rich in material, when it is comprised of such fertile intellectual soil, when so pregnant with insights and meaning, that almost every paragraph needs to be highlighted, and every second page tagged? Of course, I lower the threshold for highlighting and tagging. And, to ensure that much rich material is not forgotten for its quantity, or buried for its density, I read this book a second time.
Only one negative note: Roberts is given to outlandish Americanisms. Anyone sensitive to good English usage will find it difficult to prevent the occasional grammatical shocks from spoiling their reading pleasure. For example; "Absent efficient Coasian bargaining or complete contracting, coordinating across business to handle the externalities will require cooperation in the sense used in Chapter 3..." What he means is: "In the absence of efficient Coasian bargaining..." 'Absent' is not a prepositional phrase. It is an adjective. What a pity it is that the copy editors of the Oxford University Press didn't repair these mistakes. They give rise, however, to aesthetic problems for the most part. Once the reader becomes aware of Robert's idiosyncratic linguistic lapses, his meaning becomes clear.
For its content, the book is strongly recommended.
Book on Organizational Design.......2005-08-30
The Modern Firm discusses the interrelations between organizational design, competitive strategy, and the business environment. This book is a very very difficult read. If you have read Good to Great and expect the read to be anywhere as easy as that then you are mistaken. This book is very dense and most of the readers will not be able to finish it. Economist reviewer perhaps has a wonderful background to read such stuff with ease (for having given the book of the year award) or should have atleast known the author and his ideas well. It could be good college text book for detailed read or a week long course by the author - but as a self-read I would rate it very low.
Book Description
Despite significant gains in promoting economic growth and living conditions (or "human progress") globally over the last twenty-five years, much of the developing world remains plagued by poverty and its attendant problems, including high rates of child mortality, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and war. In Growth and Empowerment, Nicholas Stern, Jean-Jacques Dethier, and F. Halsey Rogers propose a new strategy for development. Drawing on many years of work in development economics -- in academia, in the field, and at international institutions such as the World Bank -- the authors base their strategy on two interrelated approaches: building a climate that encourages investment and growth and at the same time empowering poor people to participate in that growth. This plan differs from other models for development, including the dogmatic approach of market fundamentalism popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Stern, Dethier, and Rogers see economic development as a dynamic process of continuous change in which entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and mobility are crucial components and the idea of empowerment, as both a goal and a driver of development, is central. The book points to the unique opportunity today -- after 50 years of successes and failures, and with a growing body of analytical work to draw on -- to pursue new development strategies in both research and action.
Book Description
Research on economic growth has exploded in the past decade. Hundreds of empirical studies on economic growth across countries have highlighted the correlation between growth and a variety of variables. Determinants of Economic Growth, based on Robert Barro's Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, delivered at the London School of Economics in February 1996, summarizes this important literature.
The book contains three essays. The first is a survey of the research on the determinants of long-run growth through the estimation of panels of cross-country data. The second essay details the interplay between growth and political freedom or democracy and finds some evidence of a nonlinear relationship. At low levels of political rights, an expansion of rights stimulates growth; however, once a moderate level of democracy has been obtained, a further expansion of rights reduces growth. The final essay looks at the connection between inflation and economic growth. Its basic finding is that higher inflation goes along with a lower rate of economic growth.
Customer Reviews:
For advanced students.......2001-01-14
The person who buys this book must be really acquainted with economics (senior or master). It involves, as the title states, the determinants of growth and inflation, along with political matters. I really liked this book because it gathers econometric models to support the essays that consists in many political variables just as democracy and civil rights. Barro, as a Harvard professor, has a well-known academic life. So I would suggest for every macroeconomic student to buy this book, it really helps for courses just as Macroecon or Development Economics.
A careful study........1998-10-06
This book is essentially a report on a series of analyses of the determinants of growth, democracy, civil liberties, and inflation. As a statistical analysis with interpretation, it is excellent. If you want to know what factors really affect these variables, you will find answers here. However, the utility for modelers is limited, because the author inexplicably omits to report the extimated constant terms in any of his regressions. One hopes that succeeding publications will provide more help to those who are trying to construct dynamic models of economic growth.
Book Description
Though competition occupies a prominent place in the history of economic thought, among economists today there is still a limited, and sometimes contradictory, understanding of its impact. In Competition and Growth, Philippe Aghion and Rachel Griffith offer the first serious attempt to provide a unified and coherent account of the effect competition policy and deregulated entry has on economic growth.
The book takes the form of a dialogue between an applied theorist calling on "Schumpeterian growth" models and a microeconometrician employing new techniques to gauge competition and entry. In each chapter, theoretical models are systematically confronted with empirical data, which either invalidates the models or suggests changes in the modeling strategy. Aghion and Griffith note a fundamental divorce between theorists and empiricists who previously worked on these questions. On one hand, existing models in industrial organization or new growth economics all predict a negative effect of competition on innovation and growth: namely, that competition is bad for growth because it reduces the monopoly rents that reward successful innovators. On the other hand, common wisdom and recent empirical studies point to a positive effect of competition on productivity growth. To reconcile theory and evidence, the authors distinguish between pre- and post-innovation rents, and propose that innovation may be a way to escape competition, an idea that they confront with microeconomic data. The book's detailed analysis should aid scholars and policy makers in understanding how the benefits of tougher competition can be achieved while at the same time mitigating the negative effects competition and imitation may have on some sectors or industries.
Customer Reviews:
Highest Importance Empirical Studies with robust theory support.......2007-03-31
P. Aghion is one of the most important economists nowadays. With a solid background in mathematics, his studies are focused on relevant aspects of modern economics. One of this issues is the relationship between competition and innovation. There are microeconomic and macroeconomic issues to discuss. Traditional neoclassical economists are frequently naive when they try to link macroeconomy and innovation using the their oversimplified models. Exchange and interest rates behaviour are enough to prescribe policies that often lead to terrible results. One the other side, Heterodox economists always overestimate the importance of tacit knowledge and learning, without showing any concern with the link between development, education standarts and competition.
Aghion give us many clues about these complex issues. I strongly recommend this book (and endogenous growth theory too) to economists who want to improve their capacity to formulate viable and sound policies for sustainable development.
Average customer rating:
- A Realistic Look at Capitalism
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Cash Values: Money and the Erosion of Meaning in Today's Society (New College Lectures)
Craig, M. Gay
Manufacturer: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
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Way Of The (modern) World
-
Doing God's Business: Meaning and Motivation for the Marketplace
ASIN: 0802827756 |
Book Description
Foreword by Trevor Cairney MONEY - the world today revolves around it. Particularly in capitalist societies, money plays a central role. Given money's pride of place in modern life and given how often the Bible addresses money's use and abuse, the subject of money clearly deserves serious Christian reflection. Craig Gay offers just that in this short, incisive, balanced book. Considering the insights of several classical and contemporary social theorists, Gay shows the duplicity of a monetary ethos: capitalism is without question the most productive economic system ever devised, yet the market system also fosters a subtle nihilism that tends to empty the world of substance and meaning. Gay's study encourages readers to rediscover meanings and values that transcend "cash values" - higher values that can free us from the market economy's grip on our culture.
Customer Reviews:
A Realistic Look at Capitalism.......2004-09-07
Craig Gay takes a look at modern capitalism from a Christian perspective in Cash Values. In three chapters, Gay presents the benefits of capitalism, it's unintended consequences to society, and some ideas for a Christian approach to the subject. While the book is not long on concrete suggestions, it is a thoughful interaction steering a middle course between rejection of the free market and uncritical acceptance.
Book Description
In this book the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas collects his writings on economic growth, from his seminal On the Mechanics of Economic Development to his previously unpublished 1997 Kuznets Lectures.
The chapters progress from a general theory of how growth could be sustained and why growth rates might differ in different countries, to a model of exceptional growth in certain countries in the twentieth century, to an account of the take-off of growth in the Industrial Revolution, and finally to a prediction about patterns of growth in this new century. The framework in all the chapters is a model with accumulation of both physical and human capital, with emphasis on the external benefits of human capital through diffusion of new knowledge or on-the-job learning, often stimulated by trade. The Kuznets Lectures consider the interaction of human capital growth and the demographic transition in the early stages of industrialization. In the final chapter, Lucas uses a diffusion model to illustrate the possibility that the vast intersociety income inequality created in the course of the Industrial Revolution may have already reached its peak, and that income differences will decline in this century.
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Growth, Inequality, and Globalization: Theory, History, and Policy (Raffaele Mattioli Lectures)
Philippe Aghion , and
Jeffrey G. Williamson
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521650704 |
Book Description
Two of the world's leading economists, Philippe Aghion (a theorist) and Jeffrey Williamson (an economic historian), jointly question the conventional wisdom on inequality and growth, and address its inability to explain recent economic experience. Aghion assesses the effects of inequality on growth, and asks whether inequality matters: is excessive inequality bad for growth, and is it possible to reconcile aggregate findings with microeconomic theories of incentives? Jeffrey Williamson then discusses the Kuznets hypothesis, and focuses on the causes of wage and income inequality in developed economies.
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- Classical subject, new contribution
|
Learning from `Learning by Doing': Lessons for Economic Growth (Kenneth J. Arrow Lectures)
Robert Solow
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0804728410 |
Book Description
This book by a Nobel laureate in economics begins with a brief exposition of Kenneth J. Arrow's classic paper "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing" (1962). It shows how Arrow's idea fits into the modern theory of economic growth, and uses it as a springboard for a critical consideration of spectacular recent developments that have made growth theory a dynamic topic today.
The author then develops a new theory that combines learning by doing (identifying it with the concept of "continuous improvement") with a separate process of discrete "innovations." Learning by doing leads to a fairly smooth reduction in labor required per unit of output, tied to the rate of gross investment in new capital equipment. Innovations arrive at random; when one of them happens, the labor requirement takes a jump downward.
This new model, simple as it is, does not lend itself to self-contained solution. The author accordingly presents the results of a series of computer simulations that exhibit the variety of paths the new model economy can follow, showing, among other things, that early good luck can have a persistent effect. The book concludes with some general reflections on policies for economic growth, drawn not from any one modeling exercise but from general experience with a variety of growth models.
Of the four chapters of this book, the first two were presented as the Kenneth J. Arrow Lectures at Stanford University in 1993. The computer simulations were specially done for inclusion in this book. The final chapter on policies for economic growth was first presented as the Ernest Sturc Lecture at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington in 1991.
Customer Reviews:
Classical subject, new contribution.......2001-06-05
Noble Laureate Robert M. Solow has for decades been regarded as a leader in the field of macroeconomic theory, specifically on the subject of economic growth. Thus, his latest contribution to this growing area of economic study represented an important publication.
And Solow doesn't fail to come through. His work is concise, and approachable for those with a strong undergraduate background in economic theory. He uses a fair amount of calculus to elucidate his points, and familiarity with Monte Carlo simulations is essential.
The book's conclusion is not revolutionary; that savings and investment are critical to growth and that countries with a good head start will tend to continue to outperform countries who are behind, ceterus paribus. But his discussion of continuous improvment (as opposed to discrete innovation) is valuable, as is his reassertion that growth remains, in many senses, a stochastic process. Solow refutes new growth theory (NGT) on the grounds that it lacks rigor and is overly dependent upon unrealistic assumptions. He claims that Arrow foresaw NGT, but opted not to pursue it for this very reason.
In any case, Solow's book is a well-conceived piece of economic theory that reminds of the limitations of economic modelling and of the importance to temper our assessments with the reality of an imperfect world. For everyone interested in economic growth in the next century, this is an important piece of work which ought to be required reading for university courses, as well as for professionals shaping policy today.
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Factor Proportions, Trade, and Growth (Ohlin Lectures)
Ronald Findlay
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0262061759 |
Book Description
The standard version of the Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade treats the factors of production--land, labor, and capital--as essentially analytically similar and symmetrical. In these six essays Ronald Findlay explores modifications to the factor proportions model, looking in particular at what happens when human capital and land use are allowed to vary endogenously.
Findlay extends the factor proportions theory of international trade to consider capital accumulation, income distribution, and factor mobility in a growing world economy. Among the questions he addresses are such fundamental issues as the conditions under which international trade equalizes the rate of interest; the effects of learning and invention on economic growth and comparative advantage; the role of human capital and skill formation in determining patterns of comparative advantage and the reciprocal effect of international trade on these variables through its impact on wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers; the incorporation of new territories into a trading system by extensions of the frontier and labor migration as in the establishment of the Atlantic economy of the nineteenth century; and the impact of reductions in transport costs of industrial raw materials on global patterns of manufacturing activity and comparative advantage.
The Ohlin Lectures
Book Description
It has long been recognized that productivity growth and the business cycle are closely interrelated. Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some way towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises.
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