 Knowledge creation and control in organizationsWorking Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics Abstract: The incremental innovations that underly much of modern economic growth typically involve changes to one or more components of a complex product. This creates a tension. On the one hand, a principal would like an agent to contribute innovative components. On the other hand, ironing out incompatibilities between interdependent components can be a drain on the principal's energies. The principal can conserve her energies by tightly controlling the innovation process, but this may inadvertently stifle the agent's incentive to innovate. We show precisely how this tension betweencreating knowledge and controlling knowledge shapes organizational forms.The novel concepts introduced are illustrated with case studies of the flatpanel cathode ray tube industry and Boeing's recent location decisions. Keywords: incremental innovation; incomplete contracts; imperfect substitutability; appropriability; control (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tor:tecipa:dpuga-02-01 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics 150 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario. |
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