INSEAD Library

Includes bibliographical references and index

Bruce Kogut's writing has sketched a theory of human motivation that sees managers as social, often altruistic, sometimes as selfish, who care about their colleagues and their status among them. For the first time this book collects together key pieces that show how this view works in application to practical managerial issues, such as technology transfer and licensing, joint ventures as options, and the diffusion of ideas and best practices in the world economy. In an extensive introduction to these chapters, Kogut grounds this view in recent work in neurosciences and behavioural experiments in human sociality. On this basis, he provides a critique of leading schools of thought in management, including the resource based view of the firm cognition, and experimental economics. He proposes that people are hardwired to learn social norms and to develop identities that conform to social categories. This foundation supports a concept of coordination among people that is inscribed in social communities. It is this concept that leads to a theory of the firm as derived from social knowledge and shared identities. Kogut argues that the resource based view of the firm is only a view and it fails as a theory because it lacks a behavioural foundation. If it were to choose one, the choice would be between knowledge and organizational economics. Similarly, he argues that recent statements regarding cognition do not confront the age-old question of shared templates. If it did, it too would have to confront a theory of social knowledge. The author then proposes that this foundation is essential to an understanding of norms and institutions as well. Thus, we are moving into a period in which rapid advances in neuroscience increasingly lead to an integrated foundation for the social sciences. This opening chapter is the gateway to the collected essays, which assemble the author's published articles on knowledge, options, and institutions. The book ends on the most recent work on open source software and generating rules. The chapter on open source discusses how new technology is changing the face of innovation. The final article on generating rules is the segue to the author's current work that looks at how simple rules of social exchange leads to complex patterns of local and global knowledge.The book is a collection of some of my published papers and has a new introduction.

Digitized

Knowledge, Options, and Institutions Contents LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 Introduction: Knowledge, Options, and Institutions ix xi xiii 1 PART I KNOWLEDGE, COORDINATION, CATEGORIES, IDENTITY 2 Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology, with Udo Zander 3 Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test, with Udo Zander 4 What Firms Do: Coordination, Identity, and Learning, with Udo Zander 65 92 47 PART II VENTURES , VALUE, AND OPTIONS 5 Joint Ventures: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives 6 Joint Ventures and the Option to Expand and Acquire 7 Operating Flexibility, Global Manufacturing, and the Option Value of a Multinational Network, with Nalin Kulatilaka 8 Strategy, Heuristics, and Real Options, with Nalin Kulatilaka 146 170 119 128 PART III PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONS: THEIR DIFFUSION AND GEOGRAPHY 9 National Systems, Organizational Practices, and Institutions 10 Prototypes and Strategy: Assigning Causal Credit Using Fuzzy Sets, with 201 John Paul MacDuffie and Charles Ragin 11 Localization of Khowledge and the Mobility of Engineers in Regional Networks, with Paul Almeida 12 Open-Source Software Development and Distributed Innovation, with 228 265 Anca Metiu 284 PART IV LOOKING FORWARD 13 The Network as Knowledge: Generative Rules and the Emergence of Structure 309 REFERENCES INDEX 333 363