Most Cited Articles 1998 - 2008
Most Cited Articles: 1998 Williamson, Oliver E. 1998. Transaction cost economics: How it works: Where it is headed. De Economist (0013-063X) 146, no. 1: 23 Article Full Text Abstract Discusses the workability of transaction cost economics program as a product of two fields of economic research. Theory of economic organization; Economics of property rights; Necessity of adaptive capacities for transaction cost economics.
Most Cited Articles: 1998 Williamson, Oliver E. 1998. The Institutions of Governance. American Economic Review 88, no. 2: 75-79. Article Full Text Abstract The new institutional economics (NIE) is an idea whose time has come. That was evident to R. C. O. Matthews in 1986, who in his presidential address to the Royal Economic Society declared that the NIE was 'one of the liveliest areas in our discipline' (1986 p. 903) and thereafter described it as a body of thinking based in two propositions: institutions matter, and institutions are susceptible to analysis (1986 p. 903). The proposition that institutions matter is embraced by institutional economists of all kinds, old and new. What distinguishes the NIE from earlier (and some contemporary) work on institutions is that institutions are susceptible to analysis. Older-style institutional economics was content to critique orthodoxy and collapsed for failure to advance a positive research agenda (Ronald Coase, 1984; Matthews, 1986). The NIE has responded to the challenge by (i) developing a comparative institutional logic of organization to which (ii) many applications and refutable implications accrue and in relation to which (iii) many empirical tests have been conducted and are broadly corroborative (Paul Joskow, 1991; Howard Shelanski and Peter Klein, 1995; Bruce Lyons, 1996; Keith Crocker and Scott Masten, 1996).
Most Cited Articles: 1999 Williamson, Oliver E. 1999. Strategy research: governance and competence perspectives. Strategic Management Journal 20, no. 12: 1087-1108. Article Full Text Abstract Business strategy is a complex subject and is usefully examined from several perspectives. This paper applies the lenses of governance and competence to the study of strategy. Both the governance and the competence perspectives have had the benefit of distinguished antecedents. They have also had to deal with tautological reputations. I begin with the governance perspective, with emphasis on the six key moves through which it has been operationalized. I then examine the competence perspective in these same six respects. Governance challenges the competence perspective to apply itself more assiduously to operationalization, including the need to choose and give definition to one or more units of analysis (of which the 'routine' is a promising candidate).
Most Cited Articles: 2000 Williamson, Oliver E. 2000. The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead. Journal of Economic Literature 38, no. 3: 595. Article Full Text Abstract Since the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has provided unique societal quasi-experiments, which represent opportunities to test the applicability of existing theories in international business and management studies and to develop new ones.
Most Cited Articles: 2002 Williamson, Oliver E. 2002. The Lens of Contract: Private Ordering. American Economic Review 92 (2): 438-443. Article Full Text Abstract This article examines economic organization through the lens of contract, with special emphasis on the governance of contractual relations. The author examines the lenses of choice and contract, growing unease within orthodox economics, and formal theories of contract.
Most Cited Articles: 2003 Williamson, Oliver E. 2003. Examining economic organization through the lens of contract. Industrial and Corporate Change 12 (4): 917-942 Article Full Text Abstract The lens of contract approach to the study of economic organization is partly complementary but also partly rival to the orthodox lens of choice. Specifically, whereas the latter focuses on simple market exchange, the lens of contract is predominantly concerned with the complex contracts. Among the major differences is that non-standard and unfamiliar contractual practices and organizational structures that orthodoxy interprets as manifestations of monopoly are often perceived to serve economizing purposes under the lens of contract. A major reason for these and other differences is that orthodoxy is dismissive of organization theory whereas organization theory provides conceptual foundations for the lens of contract.
Most Cited Articles: 2005 Williamson, Oliver E. 2005. The Economics of Governance. Governance American Economic Review 95, no. 2: 1-18. Article Full Text Abstract This article presents the results of a study on corporate governance. The economics of governance is an effort to implement the "study of good order and workable arrangements," where good order includes both spontaneous order in the market, which is a venerated tradition in economics and intentional order, of a "conscious, deliberate, purposeful" kind. Interest among social scientists, economists included, in the study and practice of good order and workable arrangements has been steadily growing. The economics of governance is principally an exercise in bilateral private ordering, by which the immediate parties to an exchange are actively involved in the provision of good order and workable arrangements.
Most Cited Articles: 2008 Williamson, Oliver E. 2008. Outsourcing: Transaction cost economics and supply chain management. management Journal of Supply Chain Management 44 (2): 5-16. Article Full Text Abstract This article examines outsourcing from the transaction cost economics (TCE) perspective. The transaction is made the basic unit of analysis and the procurement decision, as between make and buy, is made (principally) with reference to a transaction cost economizing purpose. As sketched herein, the ease of contracting varies with the attributes of the transaction, with special emphasis on whether preserving continuity between a particular buyer–seller pair is the source of added value. The basic regularity is this: as bilateral dependency builds up, the efficient governance of contractual relations progressively moves from simple market exchange to hybrid contracting (with credibility supports) to hierarchy. This last corresponds to the “make� decision, which, as viewed from the TCE perspective, is viewed as the organization form of last resort. The article successively describes the lens of contract approach to economic organization, the operationalization of TCE, different styles of outsourcing, qualifications to the foregoing and the main lessons of TCE for the supply chain literature.