The Business Governance of Localized Knowledge: An Information Economics Approach for the Economics of Knowledge

Cristiano Antonelli

Industry and Innovation, 2006, vol. 13, issue 3, 227-261

Abstract: Information economics provides important tools to articulate an economics analysis of the governance mechanisms for the generation and exploitation of localized technological knowledge. A variety of hybrid forms of knowledge governance ranging from coordinated transactions and constructed interactions to quasi-hierarchies can be found between the two unrealistic extremes of pure markets and pure organizations. The notion of localized technological knowledge as a highly heterogeneous dynamic process characterized by varying levels of appropriability, tacitness, unpredictability and indivisibility, which take the forms of complementarity and modularity, cumulability, compositeness, fungibility, helps to grasp the logic behind the variety of knowledge governance mechanisms at work. The analysis of transaction, agency and communication costs provides basic guidance to elaborate an integrated framework able to understand the matching between types of knowledge and modes and mechanisms of knowledge governance both in generation and exploitation.

Keywords: Localized knowledge; information economics; knowledge asymmetries; knowledge transaction costs; knowledge agency costs; nested transactions; knowledge governance mechanisms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13662710600858118 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:indinn:v:13:y:2006:i:3:p:227-261

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20

DOI: 10.1080/13662710600858118

Access Statistics for this article

Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen

More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().