IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jeehcn/v14y2004i1n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cognition and Motivation in the Theory of the Firm: Interaction or "Never the Twain Shall Meet"?

Author

Listed:
  • Foss Nicolai J.

    (Copenhagen Business School)

Abstract

Economics in general, and the theory of the firm more specifically, places motivation and cognition in very different analytical boxes, in spite of cognitive science evidence that the boundaries between the two are in reality blurred. While this analytical assumption has often served the theory of the firm well, a number of organizational phenomena are better understood if cognition and motivation are allowed to interact, for example, through framing effects, as organizational scholars have long argued. The paper exemplifies by developing the implications of this for Williamson's notion of the "impossibility of selective intervention."théorie de la firme en particulier placent la motivation et la connaissance dans des boites analytiques très différentes, en dépit de preuves scientifiques affirmant que les deux se confondent dans la réalité. Même si cette hypothèse analytique a souvent été utile dans la théorie de la firme, certains phénomènes organisationnels sont mieux compris si on permet à la connaissance et à la motivation de réagir réciproquement, par exemple à travers des effets d'"encadrement " comme les théoriciens des organisations le soutiennent depuis longtemps. Ce papier illustre cette interaction en développant les implications de l'effet d'encadrement pour la notion d'"impossibilité d'intervention sélective" de Williamson.

Suggested Citation

  • Foss Nicolai J., 2004. "Cognition and Motivation in the Theory of the Firm: Interaction or "Never the Twain Shall Meet"?," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-24, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jeehcn:v:14:y:2004:i:1:n:4
    DOI: 10.2202/1145-6396.1117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1145-6396.1117
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1145-6396.1117?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    2. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    3. Nicolai Foss, 2001. "Bounded Rationality in the Economics of Organization: Present Use and (Some) Future Possibilities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 5(3), pages 401-425, September.
    4. Margit Osterloh & Bruno S. Frey, 2000. "Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Forms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(5), pages 538-550, October.
    5. Holmstrom, Bengt & Milgrom, Paul, 1991. "Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(0), pages 24-52, Special I.
    6. Richard N. Langlois & Nicolai J. Foss, 1999. "Capabilities and Governance: The Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 201-218, May.
    7. Dow, Gregory K., 1987. "The function of authority in transaction cost economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 13-38, March.
    8. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    9. Jackie Coyle‐Shapiro & Ian Kessler, 2000. "Consequences Of The Psychological Contract For The Employment Relationship: A Large Scale Survey," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(7), pages 903-930, November.
    10. Chip Heath & Marc Knez & Colin Camerer, 1993. "The strategic management of the entitlement process in the employment relationship," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S2), pages 75-93, December.
    11. Matthew Rabin, 1998. "Psychology and Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 11-46, March.
    12. Langlois, Richard N & Foss, Nicolai J, 1999. "Capabilities and Governance: The Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 201-218.
    13. Kirsten Foss & Nicolai J. Foss & Xose H. Vazquez-Vicente, 2003. ""Tying the Manager's Hands": How Firms can make Credible Commitments that make Opportunistic Managerial Intervention Less Likely," DRUID Working Papers 03-10, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    14. Kirsten Foss & Nicolai Foss, 2001. "Assets, Attributes and Ownership," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 19-37.
    15. Edward P. Lazear, 1991. "Labor Economics and the Psychology of Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 89-110, Spring.
    16. Schlicht, Ekkehart, 1990. "Rationality, Bounded or Not, and Institutional Analysis," Munich Reprints in Economics 3167, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    17. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 1999. "Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 83-114.
    18. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817, Decembrie.
    19. George Baker & Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 2002. "Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 39-84.
    20. Gerd Gigerenzer & Reinhard Selten (ed.), 2002. "Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262571641, December.
    21. Baker, George & Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1999. "Informal Authority in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(1), pages 56-73, April.
    22. William M. Dugger, 1996. "The Mechanisms of Governance," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 1212-1216, December.
    23. Nicolai J. Foss, 2001. "Bounded Rationality in the Economics of Organization Present Use and (Some) Future Possibilities," DRUID Working Papers 01-13, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Foss, Nicolai J., 2003. "Bounded rationality in the economics of organization: "Much cited and little used"," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 245-264, April.
    2. Nicolai J. Foss & Peter G. Klein, 2005. "The Theory of the Firm and Its Critics A Stocktaking and Assessment," DRUID Working Papers 05-03, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    3. Gibbons, Robert, 2005. "Four forma(lizable) theories of the firm?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 200-245, October.
    4. Nicolai J. Foss, 2010. "Bounded Rationality and Organizational Economics," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Foss Kirsten & Foss Nicolai & Klein Peter G. & Klein Sandra K., 2002. "Heterogeneous Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Organization," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-20, March.
    6. Bruno Deffains & Dominique Demougin, 2006. "Governance: Who Controls Matters," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-053, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    7. Nicolai Foss, 2001. "Bounded Rationality in the Economics of Organization: Present Use and (Some) Future Possibilities," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 5(3), pages 401-425, September.
    8. Nicolai J. Foss & Peter G. Klein, 2010. "Critiques of Transaction Cost Economics: An Overview," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 25, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Margit Osterloh & Jetta Frost & Bruno Frey, 2002. "The Dynamics of Motivation in New Organizational Forms," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 61-77.
    10. Kim, Jongwook & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2008. "A Strategic Theory of the Firm as a Nexus of Incomplete Contracts: A Property Rights Approach," Working Papers 08-0108, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    11. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    12. Mark Casson & Nigel Wadeson, 2012. "Internationalisation Theory," Chapters, in: Michael Dietrich & Jackie Krafft (ed.), Handbook on the Economics and Theory of the Firm, chapter 15, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Francine Lafontaine & Margaret Slade, 2007. "Vertical Integration and Firm Boundaries: The Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 629-685, September.
    14. Robert Gibbons, 2010. "Inside Organizations: Pricing, Politics, and Path Dependence," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 337-365, September.
    15. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    16. Maija Halonen‐Akatwijuka, 2010. "Organizational Design, Technology and the Boundaries of the Firm," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 544-564, July.
    17. Nicolai J. Foss, 2003. "Selective Intervention and Internal Hybrids: Interpreting and Learning from the Rise and Decline of the Oticon Spaghetti Organization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 331-349, June.
    18. Paul Walker, 2008. "The (non)Theory of the Knowledge Firm," Working Papers in Economics 08/07, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    19. Li, Ke, 2007. "Transaction cost, corporate governance and division of labor--A general equilibrium analysis of professional managers and its implication to China's practice," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 447-468, September.
    20. Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta, 2010. "Editors’ Introduction," Chapters, in: Peter G. Klein & Michael E. Sykuta (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jeehcn:v:14:y:2004:i:1:n:4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.