Antitrust Enforcement: Unresolved Dilemmas

The study of strategic behavior has made remarkable progress during the past five years. A number of troublesome problems nevertheless remain. These include (1) whether efforts to curb predation should focus primarily on price and output or if other aspects of rivalry should be included; (2) inasmuch as rules governing predation set up incentives

Antitrust Enforcement: Concluding Remarks

The 1960s was a decade when nonstandard modes of economic organization were presumed to have monopoly purpose and effect. Antitrust was preoccupied with measures of concentration and entry barriers. Such a narrow formulation facilitated easy enforcement, but sometimes at the expense of an informed welfare assessment of the issues. Three factors contributed to this

Conclusions of Transaction Cost Economics

John R. Hicks advises that since economics is concerned with a changing world, “a theory which illumines the right things now may illumine the wrong things another time. [Accordingly], there is … no economic theory which will do for us everything we want all the time. . . . We may [someday] reject our

Transaction Cost in Economics

Transaction cost economics acknowledges that technology and ownership of assets arc both important, but it maintains that neither is determinative of economic organization, nor are both together. Rather, the study of economic organization has to go beyond technology and ownership to include an exam- ination of incentives and governance. Transaction cost economics maintains that

Transaction Cost in Law

Ronald Gilson advances the novel and controversial view that business lawyers should be thought of as “transaction cost engineers” (1984). Such an approach ascribes value enhancement to the job of transaction design, which is a theme advanced repeatedly in this book.15 It emphasizes and gives content to the affirmative side of lawyering. Transaction cost

Transaction Cost in Organization

Unlike economists, sociologists have long been concerned with the puzzle, “Why are there so many kinds of organization?” (Hannan and Freeman, 1977, p. 936). Although numerous interesting explanations for organizational variety have resulted, the explanation favored here—namely, organizational variety arises in the service of transaction cost economizing—was not natural to and is still resisted

Transaction Cost Economics: Postscript

Schumpeter posed the question “Can capitalism survive” to which he ventured the opinion, “No. I do not think that it can” (1942, p. 61). Lack of intellectual support for—indeed, prevailing intellectual skepticism regarding—the merits of capitalist modes of organization was among the factors that led to that negative assessment (Schumpeter, 1942, chap. 13). Forty

Systems Everywhere

If someone were to analyze current notions and fashionable catchwords, he would find “systems” high on the list. The concept has pervaded all fields of science and penetrated into popular thinking, jargon and mass media. Systems thinking plays a dominant role in a wide range of fields from industrial enterprise and armaments to esoteric

On the History of Systems Theory

As we have seen, there is a consensus in all major fields— from subatomic physics to history—that a re-orientation of science is due. Developments in modern technology parallel this trend. So far as can be ascertained, the idea of a “general system theory” was first introduced by the present author prior to cybernetics, systems

Trends in Systems Theory

At a time when any novelty, however trivial, is hailed as being revolutionary, one is weary of using this label for scientific de- velopments. Miniskirts and long hair being called teenage revolution, and any new styling of automobiles or drug introduced by the pharmaceutical industry being so announced, the word is an advertising slogan

The Quest for a General System Theory

Modern science is characterized by its ever-increasing specializa- tion, necessitated by the enormous amount of data, the complexity of techniques and of theoretical structures within every field. Thus science is split into innumerable disciplines continually generating new subdisciplines. In consequence, the physicist, the biologist, the psychologist and the social scientist are, so to speak,

Aims of General System Theory

We may summarize these considerations as follows. Similar general conceptions and viewpoints have evolved in various disciplines of modern science. While in the past, science tried to explain observable phenomena by reducing them to an interplay of elementary units investigatable independently of each other, conceptions appear in contemporary science that are concerned with what

Closed and Open Systems: Limitations of Conventional Physics

My first example is that of closed and open systems. Conventional physics deals only with closed systems, i.e., systems which are considered to be isolated from their environment. Thus, physical chemistry tells us about the reactions, their rates, and the chemical equilibria eventually established in a closed vessel where a number of reactants is

Information and Entropy in System Perspective

Another development which is closely connected with system theory is that of the modern theory of communication, It has often been said that energy is the currency of physics, just as economic values can be expressed in dollars or pounds. There are, however, certain fields of physics and technology where this currency is not

Causality and Teleology in System Perspective

Another point I would like to mention is the change the scientific world picture has undergone in the past few decades. In the world view called mechanistic, which was born of classical physics of the nineteenth century, the aimless play of the atoms, governed by the inexorable laws of causality, produced all phenomena in

What Is Organization in System Perspective?

Similar considerations apply to the concept of organization. Organization also was alien to the mechanistic world. The problem did not appear in classical physics, mechanics, electrodynamics, etc. Even more, the second principle of thermodynamics indicated destruction of order as the general direction of events. It is true that this is different in modern physics.

General System Theory in Science

1. General System Theory and the Unity of Science Let me close these remarks with a few words about the general implications of interdisciplinary theory. The integrative function of general system theory can perhaps be summarized as follows. So far, the unification of science has been seen in the reduction of all sciences to

The Ultimate Precept: Man as the Individual

In dealing with complexes of “elements,” three different kinds of distinction may be made—i.e., 1. according to their number; 2. according to their species; 3. according to the relations of elements. The following simple graphical illustration may clarify this point (Fig.3.1) with a and b symbolizing various complexes. Fig. 3.1. See text. In cases

Growth in System Perspective

Equations of this type are found in a variety of fields, and we can use system (3.1) to illustrate the formal identity of system laws in various realms, in other words, to demonstrate the existence of a general system theory. This may be shown for the simplest case—i.e., the system con­sisting of elements of

Competition in System Perspective

Our system of equations may also indicate competition be­tween parts. The simplest possible case is, again, that all coefficients (aj#i)= 0, — i.e., that the increase in each element depends only on this element itself. Then we have, for two elements: Eliminating time, we obtain: This is the equation known in biology as the