Economic Organization, Capabilities and Coordination

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CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION PARADOXES IN THE THEORY OF THE ORGANISATION OF INDUSTRY

Jacques-Laurent Ravix¹

INTRODUCTION

‘The organisation of industry’ (Richardson 1972) describes an industrial system that consists of direction within firms, inter-firm co-operations and market transactions. Such an organisation may be considered as a framework for the analysis of what has been called the ‘institutional structure of production’ (Coase 1992), i.e. the division of productive co-ordination among different kinds of institutional arrangements. The theory of industrial coordination proposed by Richardson is not simply another criticism of the theory of industrial organisation to be inserted in a transactional framework; this criticism proposes a new ...