اقتصاد هزینه معاملات و مدیریت کسب و کار

This paper traces the origins of transaction cost economics to three seminal people who had an intense interest in business: Ronald Coase, Chester Barnard, and Herbert Simon. By contrast with the neoclassical theory of the firm, which is a top-down construction, the transaction cost economics theory of the firm is a bottom-up construction—which is to say that it is much more microanalytic (the transaction is made the basic unit of analysis) and is comparative in its mode of analysis. Several top-down maxims that have their origins in economic theory are examined in a bottom-up way, which serves to uncover conceptual and/or implementation problems with each. I furthermore examine growing applications of transaction cost reasoning to business administration and within the social sciences.

The relation between economics and business administration is commonly described as one where economics provides the theory that informs the practice. So described, the relation is mainly top–down. The resource allocation paradigm of the microeconomics textbooks, especially the neoclassical theory of the firm, is a central construction. Useful though this apparatus has been for many purposes, it operates at a high level of generality, makes limited contact with many of the problems with which students of business administration are concerned, and has often been the source of public policy error. The reasons are as described by Harold Demsetz: it is “a mistake to confuse the firm of [neoclassical] economic theory with its real-world namesake. The chief mission of neoclassical economies is to understand how the price system coordinates the use of resources, not the inner workings of real firms” (1983, p. 377). As discussed herein, the theory of the firm as governance structure is much more of a bottom–up construction. That is partly because three of the key figures to which this theory traces its origins—Ronald Coase, Chester Barnard, and Herbert Simon—had business training, experience, and/or pedagogical commitment. Not only do the inner workings of real firms matter for each of them, but these inner workings are made the object of analysis. The paper is developed in four parts.2 The business background to which I refer above is sketched in Section 1. Hitherto uncontested top down maxims are re-examined with the benefit of transaction cost economics (TCE) in Section 2. Evidence bearing on the proposition that the influence of TCE has been growing, both in general and with respect to business administration, is set out in Section 3 and is borne out by this conference. Concluding remarks follow.

Given the origins of TCEin the path-breaking work of Coase (who was trained in business), Barnard (who was a practicing business executive), and Simon (whose pedagogical ambitions were realized in the transformation of business education), little wonder that TCErelates easily and extensively to business administration. Indeed, TCEis one of the ‘‘common languages’’ that help to unify research across the social sciences in general and the functional areas of business administration in particular. Of special importance to the TCEenterprise are (1) its plausibility, especially with reference to the description of human actors and mechanisms through which it works, (2) its applied orientation, with emphasis on the governance of contractual relations (including the theory of the firm as governance structure), (3) its intertemporal process orientation, with emphasis on going concerns, (4) its interdisciplinary foundations in law, economics, and organization, and (5) its insistence on refutable implications and empirical testing. Had Moliere been asked he would have told us the obvious: many of us have been examining economic organization in a contractual way without much thinking about it, largely because the contractual approach makes productive contact with so many issues. As compared with the neoclassical theory of the firm (which is a black box construction), TCEis a much more concerned with actual practice. Partly that is explained by the business interests and backgrounds of the CBS forerunners on which TCErelies for key concepts. Thus Coase, who pointed to logical lapses in orthodoxy and introduced the idea of transaction costs, had business training. Barnard, who viewed the firm as an instrument for adapting to changing circumstances in a conscious, deliberate, purposeful way and made provision for both formal and informal mechanisms of governance, drew on his extensive business experience. And Simon was an interdisciplinary social scientist with pedagogical ambitions to reform business education.Using the crucial concepts introduced by these forerunners and others, a theory of the firm as governance structure, which is an organizational construction that relates to the inner workings of real firms, results. Little wonder that TCEhas found widespread use in the business schools. The TCEtheory of the firm as governance structure places special emphasis on the problems that attend ex post governance, which is to be contrasted with other theories of contract that focus on ex ante incentive alignment. Whereas the latter is neglectful of contractual breakdowns in the ex post contract implementation interval, TCEavers that maladaptation during contract execution is where much of the analytical action resides. This entails going beyond the derivation of an ‘‘efficient rule’’ to ask whether this rule will be implemented in the manner intended—by looking ahead, identifying contractual hazards, uncovering the mechanisms, and factoring these into the choice of governance/contractual design. Both the microanalytics of transactions and of governance structures thereby come under scrutiny, broadly in the spirit of John McMillan (2002, p. 225; emphasis added) . To answer any question about the economy, you need some good theory to organize your thoughts and some facts to ensure that they are on target. You have to look and see how things actually work or do not work. That might seem so trite as not to be worth saying, but assertions about economic matters that are based more on preconceptions than on the specifics of the situation are still regrettably common.Happily, the regrets to which McMillan refers are becoming less common as more social scientists perceive the need to deal with the phenomena in more veridical terms.