Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:06:05.466Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neither Modularity nor Relational Contracting: Inter-Firm Collaboration in the New Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Charles F. Sabel  and
Jonathan Zeitlin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a series of recent essays, including their contributions to this symposium, Richard N. Langlois and Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Daniel M. G. Raff, and Peter Temin (hereafter LRT) present interesting but contradictory views of the decentralized or vertically disintegrated post-Chandlerian economy from whose vantage point they seek to reconceptualize business history. Starting from an orientation that uneasily combines Adam Smith’s ideas about the division of labor with organizational learning, Langlois sees the current situation as dominated by the modularization of production. This modularization and the arm’s-length transactions it facilitates create a world reminiscent of the antebellum United States, although today’s highthroughput differentiated exchanges are underpinned by a set of market-supporting institutions, notably standard interfaces or design rules. Starting from an orientation toward Oliver Williamson and the minimization of coordination costs, LRT in contrast see a world of collaborators joined by long-term, largely informal relations of a distinct type reducible neither to markets nor hierarchies.

Type
Symposium: Framing Business History
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 2004 , pp. 388 - 403
Copyright
Enterprise & Society, Vol. 5 No. 3, © the Business History Conference 2004; all rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Berk, Gerald. Alternative Tracks: The Constitution of American Industrial Order, 1865-1917. Baltimore, 1994.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries. New York, 2001.Google Scholar
Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Boston, 1997.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Baker, George, Gibbons, Robert, and Murphy, Kevin J.. “Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (Feb. 2002): 39–84.Google Scholar
Berk, Gerald. “Neither Markets Nor Administration: Brandeis and the Antitrust Reforms of 1914.” Studies in American Political Development 8 (Spring 1994): 24–59.Google Scholar
Berk, Gerald. “Whose Hubris? Brandeis, Scientific Management and the Railroads.” In Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture, ed. Lipartito, Kenneth and Sicilia, David B.. Oxford, U.K., 2004, pp. 120-46.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., “The Competitive Performance of U.S. Industrial Enterprises since the Second World War.” Business History Review 68 (Spring 1994): 1–72.Google Scholar
Chesbrough, Henry. “Towards a Dynamics of Modularity: A Cyclical Model of Technical Advance.” In The Business of Systems Integration, ed. Prencipe, Andrea, Davies, Andrew, and Hobday, Michael. Oxford, U.K., 2004, pp. 174-98.Google Scholar
Garud, Raghu, and Jain, Sanjay. “The Embeddedness of Technological Systems.” Advances in Strategic Management 13 (1996): 389–408.Google Scholar
Gereffi, Gary, Humphrey, John, and Timothy Sturgeon. “The Governance of Global Value Chains.” Review of International Political Economy, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Glimstedt, Henrik. “Competitive Dynamics of Technological Standardization: The Case of Third Generation Cellular Communications.” Industry and Innovation 8 (April 2001): 49–78.Google Scholar
Helper, Susan, MacDuffie, John Paul, and Sabel, Charles F.. “Pragmatic Collaborations: Advancing Knowledge While Controlling Opportunism.” Industrial and Corporate Change 9 (Sept. 2000): 443-83.Google Scholar
Herrigel, Gary. “Emerging Strategies and Forms of Governance in High-Wage Component Manufacturing Regions.” Industry and Innovation 11 (March-June 2004): 45–79.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Raff, Daniel M. G., and Temin, Peter. “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History.” American Historical Review 108 (April 2003): 404-33.Google Scholar
Langlois, Richard N. “Chandler in a Larger Frame: Markets, Transaction Costs, and Organizational Form in History.” Enterprise & Society 5 (Sept. 2004): 355-75.Google Scholar
Langlois, Richard N. “Modularity in Technology and Organization.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 49 (Sept. 2002): 19–37.Google Scholar
Langlois, Richard N. “The Vanishing Hand: The Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism.” Industrial and Corporate Change 12 (April 2003): 351-85.Google Scholar
Sabel, Charles F., and Zeitlin, Jonathan. “Historical Alternatives to Mass Production: Politics, Markets, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Industrialization.” Past and Present 108 (Aug. 1985): 133-76.Google Scholar
Sabel, Charles F., and Zeitlin, Jonathan. “Stories, Strategies, Structures: Rethinking Historical Alternatives to Mass Production.” In World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization, ed. Sabel, Charles F. and Zeitlin, Jonathan. Cambridge, U.K., 1997, pp. 1–33.Google Scholar
Sako, Mari. “Modularity and Outsourcing: The Nature of Co-evolution of Product Architecture and Organizational Architecture in the Global Automotive Industry.” In The Business of Systems Integration, ed. Prencipe, Andrea, Davies, Andrew, and Hobday, Michael. Oxford, U.K., 2004, pp. 229-53.Google Scholar
Spear, Steven, and Kent Bowen, H.. “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System.” Harvard Business Review (Sept.-Oct. 1999): 97–106.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Timothy J. “Modular Production Networks: A New American Model of Industrial Organization.” Industrial and Corporate Change 11 (June 2002): 451-96.Google Scholar
Zeitlin, Jonathan. “Productive Alternatives: Flexibility, Governance, and Strategic Choice in Industrial History.” In Business History Around the World, ed. Amatori, Franco and Jones, Geoffrey. Cambridge, U.K., 2003, pp. 62–80.Google Scholar

Unpublished Works

Berk, Gerald. “Organizing Economic Diversity: Antitrust, Associations and Accounting in the United States, 1906-1929.” Paper presented to the “Constructing Markets, Shaping Production” conference, Idöborg, Sweden, July 5-6, 2002.Google Scholar
Berk, Gerald, and Schneiberg, Marc. “Varieties in Capitalism, Varieties of Association: Collaborative Learning in American Industries, 1900 to 1925.” Unpublished paper, University of Oregon/Reed College, October 2003.Google Scholar