Economic Organization in the Knowledge Economy Some Austrian Insights

Nicolai Foss ()

No 01-07, DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies

Abstract: I critically discuss recent claims about economic organization in the emerging “knowledge economy,” specifically that authority relations will tend to disappear (or at least become radically transformed), the boundaries of the firm will blur, and coordination mechanisms will be much more malleable than assumed in organizational economics, resulting in various “new organizational forms.” In particular, the price mechanism will be used inside hierarchies to a much greater extent. In order to obtain an analytical focus on the knowledge economy, I assume that it may be approximated by “Hayekian settings” (after Hayek 1945), that is, settings in which knowledge is distributed and where knowledge inputs are relatively more important in production than physical capital inputs. I then argue, drawing on organizational economics as well as Mises’ insights in property rights and comparative systems, that the presence of Hayekian settings does not mean that authority will disappear, etc., although economic organization will in fact be affected by the emergence of the knowledge economy. This suggests that Austrian economics has an important contribution to make to the study of economic organization.

Keywords: Economic organizations; Austrian economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D23 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://wp.druid.dk/wp/20010007.pdf (application/pdf)

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:aal:abbswp:01-07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Keld Laursen ().