While characteristically 'Austrian' themes such as entrepreneurship, economic calculation, tacit knowledge and the temporal structure of capital are clearly relevant to the business firm, Austrian economists have said relatively little about management, organization, and strategy. This innovative book features 12 chapters that all seek to advance the understanding of these issues by drawing on Austrian ideas. Building on existing research in transaction cost economics, agency theory, evolutionary economics and the resource-based theory of the firm, the authors cover a wide range of theoretical and applied topics. These include knowledge management, authority and hierarchy, modularity, corporate restructuring, telecommunications regulation and competitive advantage. They clearly show how Austrian ideas can usefully engage, challenge and extend more mainstream perspectives on economic organization. There are many books on Austrian economics and many more on the theory of the firm, but virtually none that integrate these two bodies of literature. Scholars of Austrian economics and academics interested in strategy, organization and the theory of the firm will draw great value from this insightful book.

As business struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing world, managers are bombarded with a bewildering array of schemes for how to be a boss and make an organization tick. It's tempting to be seduced by futurist fantasies where every company has the culture of a startup, and where employees in wacky, whimsical office settings, liberated from hierarchies and bosses that oppress them, are the foundation for breakthrough performance. "Get real," warn Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein. These fads ironically lead to micromanaging and, often, to disaster. Companies and societies, they show, need authority and hierarchy to coordinate work, including creative work. And, counterintuitively, Foss and Klein illustrate how the creative use of authority and hierarchy helps companies to be more agile and flexible, enabling educated, motivated people and teams to thrive. And not a moment too soon: Foss and Klein provide evidence that global challenges such as the proliferation of artificial intelligence, economic disruption, empowered knowledge workers, and black swan events such as the pandemic actually make hierarchy and the job of the manager more important than ever.

Entrepreneurship, long neglected by economists and management scholars, has made a dramatic comeback in the last two decades, not only among academic economists and management scholars, but also among policymakers, educators and practitioners. Likewise, the economic theory of the firm, building on Ronald Coase's (1937) seminal analysis, has become an increasingly important field in economics and management. Despite this resurgence, there is still little connection between the entrepreneurship literature and the literature on the firm, both in academia and in management practice. This book fills this gap by proposing and developing an entrepreneurial theory of the firm that focuses on the connections between entrepreneurship and management. Drawing on insights from Austrian economics, it describes entrepreneurship as judgmental decision made under uncertainty, showing how judgment is the driving force of the market economy and the key to understanding firm performance and organization.

`Not too long ago it was possible to be familiar with all of the important works and latest developments in transaction cost economics. That that is no longer the case is a testament to the intellectual appeal and empirical success of the transaction cost approach. For newcomers, the entries in this volume, by some of TCE's most knowledgeable and eloquent contributors, offer an excellent introduction to the issues, methods, discoveries, and debates in the field; for veterans, the volume provides a highly valuable resource for catching on newest research.' - Scott E. Masten, University of Michigan School of Business, US Since its emergence in the 1970s, transaction cost economics (TCE) has become a leading approach in the research on contracts, firm organization and strategy, antitrust, marketing, inter-firm collaboration and entrepreneurship. With contributions by leading scholars in economics, law and business administration - including Oliver E. Williamson, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics for his development of the transaction cost approach - this volume reviews the latest developments in TCE and applies them to contemporary theoretical and empirical problems. Beginning with an introductory essay by the editors, the book covers precursors and influences, core concepts, applications, alternatives and critiques. The contributing authors describe, extend and assess the transaction cost approach to economic organization, and examine the role of TCE in the larger legal, economic, and managerial literatures on organizations and institutions. An original and comprehensive volume, the Companion introduces the novice and informs the specialist about TCE's fundamental elements, recent controversies and new developments. An accessible and astute delineation of how transaction cost economics offers important and unique insights into key organizational, managerial and societal issues of our day, the Companion will be of particular interest to practitioners of business law and antitrust, corporate executives and management consultants. Additionally, academic researchers, scholars and students of economics, business and law will find it an invaluable reference.

Entrepreneurship, long neglected by economists and management scholars, has made a dramatic comeback in the last two decades, not only among academic economists and management scholars, but also among policymakers, educators and practitioners. Likewise, the economic theory of the firm, building on Ronald Coase's (1937) seminal analysis, has become an increasingly important field in economics and management. Despite this resurgence, there is still little connection between the entrepreneurship literature and the literature on the firm, both in academia and in management practice. This book fills this gap by proposing and developing an entrepreneurial theory of the firm that focuses on the connections between entrepreneurship and management. Drawing on insights from Austrian economics, it describes entrepreneurship as judgmental decision made under uncertainty, showing how judgment is the driving force of the market economy and the key to understanding firm performance and organization.

The 'Austrian' tradition is well-known for its definitive contributions to economics in the twentieth century. However, Austrian economics also offers an exciting research agenda outside the traditional boundaries of economics, especially in the management disciplines. This Element examines how Austrian ideas play a key role in expanding the understanding of fields like entrepreneurship, strategy, and organization. It focuses especially on the vital role that entrepreneurs play in guiding economic progress by shaping firms and their strategic behavior. In doing so, it explains a wide range of contributions that Austrian economics makes to the understanding of key problems in management, while also highlighting many directions for future work in this inspiring tradition.

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Entrepreneurship is a hot topic in academic, managerial, and policy circles. Yet researchers and policymakers tend to define entrepreneurship narrowly as business start-ups, and entrepreneurs as young dreamers with a particular personality. In fact, as Peter G. Klein argues, entrepreneurship is a far broader, pervasive, and more important phenomenon in the market and in the free society. Klein is one of the stars of the Austrian School today, with a specialization in an area in which the Austrians make a unique contribution: the entrepreneur's role society as the driving force of the market. The last major work on this topic appeared in 1973 with Kirzner's own book on entrepreneurship. Klein's own book, as Peter Lewin has written, offers "a fresh, immensely revealing perspective." In "Capitalists and Entrepreneurs," Klein rehabilitates and expands the classical concept of the entrepreneur as a judgmental decision-maker, linking the capitalist-investor and the entrepreneur-promoter. Building on foundations laid by the Austrian school of economics, Frank Knight's theory of uncertainty, and the modern economics of organization, Klein shows how an entrepreneurial perspective sheds light on firm size and structure, corporate governance and control, mergers and acquisitions, organizational design, and a host of managerial and financial problems. He also offers a reinterpretation of the modern Austrian school and a critique of the "opportunity-discovery" perspective in modern entrepreneurship studies. In a series of shorter essays he tackles the economics of the Internet, network theory, the socialism of the intellectual class, the financial crisis, and the contributions of Carl Menger, F. A. Hayek, and Oliver Williamson.

The Reagan and Thatcher "revolutions." The collapse of Eastern Europe dramatically captured in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. F. A. Hayek, "grand old man of capitalism" and founder of the classical liberal, free-market revival which ignited and inspired these world events, forcefully predicted their occurrence in writings such as "The Road to ""Serfdom," first published in 1944.
Hayek's well-known social and political philosophy--in particular his long-held pessimistic view of the prospects of socialism, irrefutably vindicated by the recent collapse of the Eastern bloc--is fully grounded in the Austrian approach to economics. In this new collection, Hayek traces his intellectual roots to the Austrian school, the century-old tradition founded at the University of Vienna by Carl Menger, and links it to the modern rebirth of classical liberal or libertarian thought.
As Hayek reminds us, the cornerstone of modern economics--the theory of value and price--"represents a consistent continuation of the fundamental principles handed down by the Vienna school." Here, in this first modern collection of essays on the Austrian school by one of its preeminent figures, is the genesis of this tradition and its place in intellectual history.
Reflections on Hayek's days as a young economic theorist in Vienna, his opening address to the inaugural meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, and essays on former teachers and other leading figures in the Austrian school are included in volume 4. Two hitherto unavailable memoirs, "The Economics of the 1920s as Seen from Vienna," published here for the first time, and "The Rediscovery of Freedom: Personal Recollections," available for the first time in English, make this collection invaluable for Hayek scholars.
Hayek's writings continue to provide an invaluable education in a subject which is nothing less than the development of the modern world.