Strategy Seminar on Organizational Design

3 credits · Graduate

We study the organization of the firm. The portfolio of theories covered include: transaction cost economics, evolutionary economics, the resource (knowledge) based view of the firm, contingency theory, and institutional theory. We discuss research problems related to: the boundaries of the firm (e.g. 'make' vs 'buy'); the internal division of labor (e.g. coordination across divisions); hierarchy and decision rights (e.g. centralization vs decentralization); incentive and rewards systems (e.g. process vs outcome driven performance metrics); and the interplay between the formal and informal structure of the firm.