The O&M Readership is Expanding
| Nicolai Foss |
We have been suspecting it for a long time, but now it is an established fact: We have an expanding celebrity readership. Here is a series of nice pics of an O&M celebrity reader preparing to post a comment on a Nicolai Foss strategic management post. Now we only need to get Salma to live up to that surname …
Readings on Structural Equations Modeling
| Peter Klein |
I posted a while back on the increasing interest in structural equations modeling (SEM) among economists and management scholars. My PhD student Frayne Olson, an SEM enthusiast (and, incidentally, the nephew of Mancur), sent me some introductory references, which I hereby pass along:
- Rex B. Kline, Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, 2nd ed. (Guilford Press, 2005). (“A very easy to understand presentation of the SEM concepts and applications.”)
- Ralph O. Mueller, Basic Principles of Structural Equation Modeling: An Introduction to LISREL and EQS (Springer, 1996). (“Uses basic matrix algebra to explain how SEM coefficients are estimated. I have found this to be closer to the typical teaching format used within econometrics textbooks. It may be easier to make the transitions and linkages to traditional regression analysis by reading this book.”)
Addendum: Every good SEM analysis includes a path diagram (like the boxes-and-arrows models filling the pages of the Academy of Management Review). This paper tells you all you could ever want to know, and more, about the theory underlying such diagrams. (Via Technology Ideas for Teachers.) And wouldn’t you much rather see path diagrams like these?
Wal-Mart — Cont’d
| Nicolai Foss |
My co-blogger has recently drawn attention to how Wal-Mart contributes to reducing global poverty. On my recent visit to Atlanta, Georgia, he also arranged a trip to Alabama that in addition to a visit to the Ludwig von Mises Institute was also supposed to include a touristic visit to a Super Wal-Mart, no less (I shall not comment on why the latter visit never materialized, but Peter’s knowledge of the Georgia and Alabama roads may have played a role here).
Apropos of Wal-Mart, the latest issue of the Academy of Management Perspectives (formerly the Academy of Management Executive) features an excerpt from Charles Fishman’s The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works — and How It Is Transforming the American Economy. R. Edward Freeman contributes a commentary which predictably concludes that Wal-Mart “… can’t do much right, simply because it is trying to tell its story in the narrow economic mode” (p.40), and therefore sacrifices a number of relevant stakeholder interests. (more…)
Dissing Prahalad
| Peter Klein |
Management theory superstar C.K. Prahalad, having conquered the corporation in Competing for the Future, then turned his attention to global poverty. His plan urged firms to tap into the purchasing power of the world’s poorest consumers, creating large gains for both buyers and sellers. But there are doubters.
C.K. Prahalad’s theory on the purchasing power at the “bottom of the pyramid” (BOP) has a legion of enthusiastic supporters. The BOP argument that savvy multinationals will enrich themselves and the poor by selling to this market is “at best a harmless illusion and potentially a dangerous delusion,” according to Michigan professor Aneel Karnani. His new working paper, Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid: a mirage, is the strongest criticism I’ve seen of Prahalad and his devotees.
This is from Christine Bowers at the World Bank’s PSD Blog. Karani’s paper calls the BOP argument “seductively appealing, [but] riddled with fallacies.” Says Karani:
Not only is the BOP market quite small, it is unlikely to be very profitable, especially for a large company. The costs of serving the markets at the bottom of the pyramid are very high. The poor are often geographically dispersed (except for the urban poor concentrated into slums) and culturally heterogeneous. This increases distribution and marketing costs and makes it difficult to exploit economies of scale. Weak infrastructure (transportation, communication, media, and legal) further increases cost of doing business. Another factor leading to high costs is the small size of each transaction.
Read the paper here.
What Do We Really Know About Organizations?
| Peter Klein |
Recently a prominent economist, having discovered O&M for the first time, emailed me: “So what have we learned about how organizations really, really work in the past decade?”
I was in an airport when I received the query, and didn’t have time to prepare a thoughtful, well-crafted response. Rather than ignore the question, however, I replied with a few off-the-cuff remarks. After reading my remarks, I’d like readers to respond with their own brief thoughts. I.e., if you had to answer this question, quickly, in 250 words or less, what would you have said?
Here’s what I wrote (with a few small touch-ups): (more…)
Essays on Schumpeterian Economics
| Peter Klein |
Mark Frank reviews Arnold Heertje’s Schumpeter on the Economics of Innovation and the Development of Capitalism for EH.Net. The book collects eleven of Heertje’s essays on Schumpeter, offering “a solid introduction into the insights of Schumpeter’s vision, as well as an interesting first-hand account on the evolution of Schumpeter’s influence within economics over the past several decades.”
PS: One of the best biographies you’ve never heard of is Robert Loring Allen’s Opening Doors: the Life and Work of Joseph Schumpeter (Transaction Publishers, 1991).
Four Theories of Profit
| Lasse Lien |
The word equilibrium should perhaps be used sparingly here in this Austrian stronghold. Nevertheless, I shall dare to use it once or twice below. One of the biggest buzzes at the recent Academy of Management meeting in Atlanta was Richard Makadok’s paper, “Four Theories of Profit and Their Interaction.” Makadok’s main point was that we have four main classes of theories/mechanisms explaining positive profits in equilibrium, and that while we know a great deal about each theory individually, we do not know much about their interaction. I certainly agree that studying the interaction between such theories is worthwhile, and there is a lot to like about Makadok’s paper (which I BTW only have an older version of, therfore no link). What I am less sure about is what these basic theories should be, and how independent the four theories suggested by Makadok really are. (more…)
Take That, Berle and Means
| Peter Klein |
When the Board and senior management of media company VNU agreed to a buyout by a private-equity group headed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, shareholders did something usual: they rebelled.
The rebels — including some of the world’s largest mutual funds — proposed their own business plan and new executives, and tried to force the chairman to quit. “We took the initiative to defend long-term shareholders’ interests,” says the group’s leader, Eric Knight, head of New York-based Knight Vinke Asset Management.
After a months-long battle, shareholders eventually won a modest increase of nearly $250 million from the private-equity firms — or 2.5% more than the original deal. But that improvement was less significant than the fact that shareholders had rebelled, proposing a do-it-yourself restructuring plan that competed with a big private-equity offer accepted by management and the board.
So reports the W$J in its last Friday’s issue. The story is pitched as indicating a more-general backlash against LBOs. Warren Buffett is quoted as warning his shareholders against “deal flippers.” However, there is plenty of evidence that LBOs, on average, generate long-term gains, not only for shareholders but also for the economy as a whole. (Look for a major contribution to this literature from my PhD student John Chapman.) And isn’t it ironic to find stockholders taking an active stand against private-equity investors, given Michael Jensen’s warning of the “Eclipse of the Public Corporation”? Maybe the public corporation has life in it still.
Oskar Morgenstern on Economic Data
| Peter Klein |
Philipp Bagus rehabilitates Oskar Morgenstern’s great, and underappreciated, book On the Accuracy of Economic Observations, first published in 1950. Morgenstern’s target was national income statistics and macro-econometric forecasting, but many of the same issues apply to business forecasting as well.
Methodological Individualism and the Selfish Gene
| Nicolai Foss |
As a staunch advocate of methodological individualism in the social sciences, I have often experienced the following comment at seminar presentations and in conversations: “Why take the individual as the explanatory atom? Why not go further in the direction of reductionism and begin analysis with the selfish gene?”
The comment is usually (though not always) intended to suggest that an advocacy of methodological individualism is fundamentally arbitrary and that there is no reason why individuals should have a privileged status in an explanatory sense. However, the comment is based on a fallacy, which Livia Markoczy and Jeff Goldberg (1998) call the “driver-seat fallacy.” To wit:
It is all too common for people to imagine that evolutionary psychologists and others are claiming that our thoughts and emotions are driven by our genes … This fallacy misunderstands the way genes work. Genes build bodies. … Once the body is built, the genes have no control or influence on what those bodies do. It makes no more sense to say that genes drive our thoughts and emotions than it does to say that genes pump our blood. Our heart pumps our blood and our brain drives our thoughts and emotions … Our genes are not in the driver’s seat, we are.
Thus, the selfish gene argument against methodological individualism is a red herring.
Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Portal
| Peter Klein |
The Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Research Portal summarizes articles and working papers, events, grant opportunities, and other useful information related to entrepreneurship research. A valuable resource for those doing work in this area.
Think Globally, Act Locally: Shop at Wal-Mart
| Peter Klein |
Michael Strong, who heads the FLOW project, explains:
Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month. With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports), Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.
Read the whole thing here. And get some of these cool wristbands from the Adam Smith Institute: “I buy goods from poorer countries.”
Gordon on Private Communities
| Peter Klein |
My favorite urban economist, USC’s Peter Gordon, on private communities:
Robert Nelson has documented the current migration into private communities which now house 55-million Americans. Governance is by homeowners associations (HOAs) and markets are vetting the trade-offs of property rights protections vs rights losses that most property owners look for. The fly-in-the-ointment is an oldie: the problems of democracy are well documented and are real at all levels of government, whether it be federal, state, local or private.
This is why Spencer MacCallum has predicted that HOAs are just a waystation and better forms of governance will replace them. He suggests the hotel as his model, where governance is by contract rather than by democracy.
One More Stride Forward in the Struggle Against Collectivism
| Nicolai Foss |
“Individuals and Organizations: Thoughts on a Micro-Foundations Project for Strategic Management and Organizational Analysis” by Teppo Felin and me has just been published in David Ketchen and Donald D Bergh, Research Methodology in Strategy and Management 3. Here is a working paper version. And here is the Abstract:
Making links between micro and macro levels has been problematic in the social sciences, and the literature in strategic management and organization theory is no exception. The purpose of this chapter is to raise theoretical issues in developing micro-foundations for strategic management and organizational analysis. We discuss more general problems with collectivism in the social sciences by focusing on specific problems in extant organizational analysis. We introduce micro-foundations to the literature by explicating the underlying theoretical foundations of the origins of individual action and interaction. We highlight opportunities for future research, specifically emphasizing the need for a rational choice program in management research.
A Muddle on Vertical Integration
| Peter Klein |
Slate’s Daniel Gross offers a hopeless muddle on vertical integration in his latest Moneybox column. Citing several examples of forwards integration mentioned in a recent WSJ article, Gross proclaims “the return of one of the great industrial developments of the late 19th century: vertical integration.” But the reasoning is a mess.
First, there’s no systematic evidence that vertical integration ever went away. We have plenty of anecdotal information about outsourcing, increased use of networks and alliances, “refocusing,” and the like, but little systematic evidence for a comprehensive, economy-wide trend toward vertical dis-integration. (more…)
Silly Things Nobel Prize Winners Say
| Nicolai Foss |
It is comforting to us ordinary mortals that Nobel Prize winners in economics have contributed their share of nonsense. Here at O&M we hope to make the Silly Things etc. post a regularly occurring feature. Today’s quotation is from Douglass C. North’s recent Understanding the Process of Economic Change (2005: 122):
Economists of a libertarian persuasion have for some time labored under the delusion that there is something called laissez faire and that once there are in place “efficient” property rights and the rule of law the economy will perform well without further adjustment. The scandals involving Enron, Dynergy, WorldCom, and others in 2001-2002 should have laid such a delusion to rest.
Bell Labs’s New Mandate: Make Money
| Peter Klein |
AT&T’s legendary Bell Labs — home of the transistor, the laser, UNIX, cellular telephony, and other breakthroughs — is being turned into a profit center.
Each [project] is expected to make back six times what it spends on research. Those with the biggest financial potential get the most funding. Researchers often condense their work into eight-minute PowerPoint presentations. [New head Jeong] Kim also seeks more government research grants and is aiming to speed the transformation of technology into products by seeking corporate partners and venture capital.
In earlier days, Bell Labs’ scientists might have rejected Mr. Kim’s commercial approach to science. Not now.
So reports the W$J on today’s front page. I suspect that advocates of increased public funding for R&D will take this as further evidence of the market’s inability to supply public goods. Terence Kealey demurs.
Update: The University of Illinois, recognizing the growing importance of for-profit universities such as the University of Phoenix, will establish a for-profit subsidiary. (Via Richard Vedder)
Firms, Strategies, and Economic Change
| Peter Klein |
My review of Tony Yu’s Firms, Strategies, and Economic Change: Explorations in Austrian Economics (Edward Elgar, 2005), written for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, is available for preview here.
All Firms Are Not Alike
| Peter Klein |
This may come as a shock to regulators, but all firms are not alike. No one-size-fits-all regulatory policy can possibly be effective. Yet, SOX and similar governance codes impose a host of blanket requirements (audit committees, majority of outside directors, etc.) on all companies, large and small, focused and diversified, profitable and unprofitable, and so on. Economically literate regulators must be schooled in industrial-organization models in which the “representative firm” is identical to every other firm.
This new paper by LSE economists Sridhar Arcot and Valentina Giulia Bruno examines heterogeneity among governance choices at UK companies and finds that the best-governed firms are not always those that conform to the “best practices” imposed by regulators.
A [governance] measure which accounts for different choices by companies of corporate governance is significantly associated with performance as against measures based on a tick-box approach, which are not. We find that companies departing from best practice for valid reasons perform exceptionally well and out-perform the fully compliant ones. In contrast, mere compliance with the provisions of the Code does not necessarily result in better performance.
(Via Professor Bainbridge)
Update: Dale Oesterle argues that uniform listing requirements for IPOs are depressing the US IPO market, suggesting that small firms should be allowed to make their IPOS over the Internet, as is allowed in the UK.
Is Judgment Measurable?
| Lasse Lien |
The hosts of this blog have offered an intriguing perspective on entrepreneurship, in which the entrepreneur is seen as an individual possessing judgment. Judgment is in short the ability to spot opportunities for profit under Knightian uncertainty (as opposed situations involving mere risk). Because there are prohibitive transaction costs associated with exploiting judgement via market contracting, the entrepreneur is left with little choice but to start his or her own firm to exploit this competence/skill/resource. This seems quite plausible, and I nodded enthusiastically as I read the paper. However, one problem kept — and keeps — bothering me (as a lowly empiricist); the problem of how to establish the existence of judgment empirically. (more…)
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