Knowledge Management What Can Organizational Economics Contribute?

Nicolai Foss () and Volker Mahnke

No 03-02, DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies

Abstract: Knowledge management has emerged as a very successful organization practice and has been extensively treated in a large body of academic work. Surprisingly, however, organizational economics (i.e., transaction cost economics, agency theory, team theory and property rights theory) has played no role in the development of knowledge management. We argue that organizational economics insights can further the theory and practice of knowledge management in several ways. Specifically, we apply notions of contracting, team production, complementaries, hold-up, etc. to knowledge management issues (i.e., creating and integration knowledge, rewarding knowledge workers, etc.) , and derive refutable implications that are novel to the knowledge management field from our discussion.

Keywords: Transaction costs; organizational economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M12 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-com and nep-ino
Date: 2003
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