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The purpose of this paper is to provide a multidimensional framework for the identification, description and comparative analysis of alternative farm structures and their properties for economic development.

Integrating previous typologies and considering a large set of examples, the authors identify six attributes that are necessary to characterize and compare farm structures: size; strategy; organizational form; legal form; who the owners are; and degree of separation of ownership and control. They also discuss potential complementarities between those organizational attributes and specific features of the institutions of developing and emerging countries, such as contract enforcement and property rights protection regime, and developed capital markets and corporate law.

Conceptually and empirically, effective farm structures can deviate from the templates traditionally considered – “small family-owned farm” or “large factory-like corporate farm,” combining structural attributes in diverse ways. The dimensionalization of farm structures also helps in revealing complementary institutional traits at the regional or larger system level that may foster development processes.

The paper is limited to theory building and case-based evidence. Nevertheless, it provides dimensions that can be measured on a larger scale and by quantitative studies.

This paper sheds light on organizational diversity in agriculture and on a wider set of feasible development paths.

This paper builds on a long-lasting research program on the micro-foundations of innovative decision making, founded on a development of a neglected epistemic aspect of Simon's work, and on contributions in epistemology, in which heuristics are not procedures that are uncertaintyavoiding, economizing on cognitive and search effort, and problem-space reducing, but procedures that are uncertainty-modeling, investing in research effort, and problem-expanding. The paper offers a summary of the main effective heuristics of that kind so far identified, as applied to real processes of innovative decision making under epistemic uncertainty, such as judging and investing in novel entrepreneurial projects. It argues and shows that, in contrast to the common view, a wide range of those procedures, usually thought to belong to different and rival models, can be fruitfully combined.

Connecting and integrating the economics, organization, and management of the firm with other relevant perspectives in political science, constitutional law, and constitutional political economy, this paper revisits the nature of the corporation as a particular type of constitutional contract. The baseline argument is to show how far we can go in redesigning and democratizing the corporate form of business “societas” by using only organizational effectiveness criteria before any ethical or political options. In fact, on the basis of those (re-)foundations, the analysis addresses the questions of why the form of government of that societas should be (and in part already is in various corporate law systems) a “republic of rightholders”; who those “rightholders” should be; and which structures (organs and bodies) and decision and control procedures may sustain effective governance not only in terms of the representation of legitimate interests but also in terms of decision quality. The result is the specification of the requisite variety of “chambers” and within “chambers.”

The variety and change of organization forms in the agri-business industry are analyzed, extending available comparative economic organization approach (most notably transaction cost economics) with negotiation analysis and organization design theory. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Three extensions are proposed and argued to be particularly useful for analyzing economic organization in conditions such as those prevailing in agri-food industries. First, more consideration is given to horizontal structures and associational contracts as a particularly important response to transactional problems in this field. Second, it is acknowledged that different conditions of substitutability in different stages of the chain make it likely that transaction costs are different for different parties, bringing them to have different preferences over governance solutions, whereby a negotiation problem on efficient arrangements has to be solved. Third, the very process of integrating different parties’ interests contributes in explaining the emergence of “hybrids” and in designing more efficient and more fair forms within the (very) large class of hybrids, and even within any sub-type of hybrid, such as sub-contracting, licensing, franchising, consortia, etc.

New Pareto-improving and Nash-improving solutions are specified, and shown to provide indications for organizational change that differ from those predicted and prescribed by standard organizational economics. Those solutions are also shown to be realistic (possible in reality) through case studies on actual non-main-stream experiences approximating those arrangements. Both the analytic method proposed, and the solutions found, provide useful and currently missing tools to private and public policy makers for improving the organization of the sector.

The study specify pre-conditions for reaching superior agreements, that suggest hypotheses for empirical further research on the factors that may favor or hinder those changes.

A “trend” for change is recommended for the agri-food sector, toward more associational and horizontal arrangements, rather than either toward market or hierarchical governance or any hybrid intermediate point between them. It has been shown that this prescription should hold not only across stages of the value chain, but also among firms within the same stage (in the case, the farming stage).

The proposed changes should improve the fairness of economic organization in the sector. Re-equilibrating negotiation power is an alternative way of reducing transaction costs across stages and a pre-condition for reaching more efficient and fair agreements across stages.

Both the analytic method proposed, and the solutions found, extend economic organization theory, and provide useful and currently missing tools to private and public policy makers for designing and assessing the organization of the sector.

This chapter reconstructs the roots of configurational analysis in organization theory and organizational economics, focusing on the elements of configurational thinking that are particularly relevant to organizational design; and outlining some future prospects for a configurational theory of organization design. We detect the presence of configurational ideas in many organization theories and organizational economics approaches. We argue that this, seldom acknowledged, continuity extends and enriches the implications of configurational analysis for organization design. In addition, we define and identify ‘structural heterogeneity’ as an organizational property that can be distinctively studied by configurational analysis, distinguishing between internal heterogeneity – diversity of organizational attributes within one configuration – and external heterogeneity – diversity of organizational configurations under the same environmental conditions. Some of the insights that can be gained through a configurational analysis of structural heterogeneity are illustrated through a fs/QCA study of a multi-industry sample of firms.

For more than a century, the corporation has shaped our thinking of organizations. This deeply institutionalized form is still regarded as both the iconic business organization and the core structural unit of our economic order. Today, however, it stands at a crossroads. Economic, social, and environmental failures of the recent past as well as misconduct and scandals are widely linked to inadequacies in this corporate form and its governance. The aim of this volume is to spark a debate within the field. In this introduction, we provide an outline of the current crisis and an overview of the interdisciplinary set of articles presented in this volume. We conclude with a view ahead and a plea for the acknowledgement of “alternatives.”