Hardback : £111.00
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.
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.
1: Introduction: Knowledge, Options, and Institutions
Part I: Knowledge, Coordination, Categories, Identity
2: with Udo Zander: Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative
Capabilities, and the Replication of Knowledge
3: with Udo Zander: Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and
Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test
4: with Udo Zander: What Firms Do: Coordination, Identity, and
Learning
Part II: Practices, Institutions, and Diffusion
5: Country Capabilities and the Permeability of Borders
6: National Systems, Organizational Practices, and Institutions
7: with John Paul MacDuffie and Charles Ragin: Prototypes and Fuzzy
Work Practices: Assigning Causal Credit for Performance
Part III: Markets , Value, and Options
8: Joint Ventures: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
9: Joint Ventures and the Option to Expand and Acquire
10: with Nalin Kulatilaka: Operating Flexibility, Global
Manufacturing, and the Option Values of a Multinational Network
11: with Nalin Kulatilaka: Strategy, Heuristics, and Real
Options
Part IV: Institutions and Geography
12: with Paul Almeida: Localization of Knowledge and the Mobility
of Engineers in Regional Networks
13: with Anca Metiu: Open-Source Software Development and
Distributed Intelligence
Part V: Looking Forward
14: Network as Knowledge: Generative Rules and the Emergence of
Structure
Bruce Kogut received his Ph.D. from MIT, has been a chaired
professor at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) and at INSEAD
(Fontainebleau), and as of September 2007 the Bernstein Chaired
Professor at Columbia University. Awarded an honorary doctorate at
the Stockholm School of Economics where he has often been a
visiting professor, he has also been a visitor at the Ecole
Polytechnique, the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, and the Santa Fe
Institute. He is on the
principal orginators of the theory of the firm as a reservoir of
knowledge and capabilities embedded in social networks. In
addition, he introduced the use of real options into strategy in
reference to
joint ventures and multinational production, and the study of
institutions as critical to the study of the diffusion of best
practices.
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