Search results

Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study aims to address this gap.

The authors develop a novel conceptual framework applying the distinction between the two types of economic adaptation to stakeholder theory.

The authors argue that the idea of cooperative adaptation is particularly useful for describing the firm’s collaboration with primary stakeholders in the joint value creation process. In contrast, autonomous adaptation is more relevant for firms interacting with secondary stakeholders who are not directly engaged in joint value creation and may not have formal contractual relationships with the firm. Accordingly, cooperative adaptation can be seen as vital for resolving team production problems affecting joint value creation, whereas autonomous adaptation addresses how the firm maintains legitimacy within the larger stakeholder environment.

Similar to its significance for transaction cost economics, the distinction between the two types of adaptation equips stakeholder theory with a new systematic understanding of a potentially broad spectrum of firm–stakeholder collaboration forms.

This paper aims to identify purchasing-related costs through the prism of transaction costs and costs of purchasing management activity.

The authors conducted a survey among 150 medium and large manufacturing companies in the chemical, automotive and electromechanical industries operating in Central and Eastern European countries. The collected data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis.

The studied companies carry out an integrated purchasing-related cost system. The authors found a statistical significance of the covariances between the pretransaction, transaction and post-transaction costs. In addition, costs that are of particular importance in long-term purchasing transactions were identified. Moreover, the authors identified the costs of quality and support actions as the most significant.

This research details the discussion of costs with consideration for the insights of managers of medium-sized and large companies.

The paper contributes to the knowledge of purchasing-related costs through the lens of the total cost of ownership that influences the purchasing management and the decisions within the buyer-supplier relationship.

This paper introduces a new mathematical model for analyzing the economic benefits of incorporating the fourth party logistics (4PL), which is a contractor (i.e. agent) for the supply chain coordination and construction based on the division of community and the outsourcing development. Based on the physical theory and the wave-particle duality, a supply chain is the special organization whose characteristic has wave-particle duality. The mathematical model enriches the connotation of 4PL and it broadens the thought for 4PL development. Secondly, the proposed mathematical model predicated on transaction costs, is supported by Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) and acts as the theoretical analysis tool of 4PL for coordinating 3-party generic supply chain. Through the model, some trendy conclusions can be drawn to provide theoretical support for 4PL’s practices. Finally, a case illustrates our conclusions.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of social capital on human capital; the effect of social capital on transaction costs; the influence of social capital, human capital and transaction costs on empowerment; the indirect effect of social capital on empowerment through human capital; and the indirect effect of social capital on empowerment through transaction costs in Bangli Regency.

The population in this research is all wood carving business in Bangli Regency, in all districts some 366 business units. The number of respondents surveyed were 191 business units in all sub-districts. The sampling technique used is stratified random sampling, with strata of business area. Inferential analysis is preceded by using factor analysis techniques to obtain factor scores on each latent variable, followed by path analysis to answer the research objectives.

Based on the analysis, the following conclusions are drawn: social capital has a positive and significant impact on human resources; positive social capital and significant positive to transaction costs; social capital and human resources have a positive and significant effect while transaction costs and no significant positive effect on empowerment; human resources partially mediate the influence of social capital on empowerment; and transaction costs do not act as a variable, mediating the influence of social capital on empowering small woodcraft industry in Bangli Regency.

This study is one of the few to investigate the role of social capital, human capital and transaction cost on empowerment of small industries, especially wood carving in Bangli District. This small woodcraft industry is famous for its uniqueness that characterizes Balinese carving ornaments. But lately, the productivity of handicrafts wood carving, especially in Bangli District, fluctuates tend to decline. Social capital, in addition to human capital and technology, also plays an important role in the production process. Social capital equals other physical capital and can increase productivity and economic efficiency. Higher social capital owned by individuals or groups can reduce transaction costs; thus economic activity can run efficiently. Social capital is the information, trust and norms of reciprocity inherent in social networks.

In response, the purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical frameworks about the organizational uncertainty behind what and when to adopt blockchain technology and their implications on transaction costs. The immature nature and the absence of standards in blockchain technology lead to uncertainty in government organizations concerning the adoption (“what to adopt”) and the identification of the right time (“when to start”).

Using transaction cost theory and path dependency theory, this paper proposes two frameworks: to assess transaction cost risks and opportunities costs; and to depict four different types of transaction costs outcomes regarding blockchain adoption.

This paper identifies various theoretical concepts that influence blockchain adoption and combine the two critical constructs of “bounded rationality” and the “lock-in effect” to categorize the multiple transaction costs outcomes for blockchain adoption.

Although existing research in blockchain highlights mainly the potential benefits of blockchain applications, only a little attention has been given to frameworks that categorize potential transaction costs outcomes under uncertainty, in particular from organizational theorists.

Both frameworks advance the understanding of the decision-making behind blockchain adoption and synthesize the current literature to offer conceptual clarity regarding the varied implications and outcomes linked to the uncertainty regarding transactions costs stemming from blockchain technology.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of governance structure alignment, property rights protection, and reputation in generating efficiency in dairy agro-industrial system in Paraná, Brazil, and Midi-Pyrénées, France.

Descriptive qualitative research, comprising semi-structured interviews with producers, processors and key agents of the dairy agrindustrial system in Brazil and France, in 2016/2017.

As a result, it was identified that measurement generates information about transacted dimensions and when it is shared can generate affect reputation in transactions that leads to system improvement. It was also observed that, in the dairy agro-industrial system, reputation acquired does not reduce all the measurement costs, as the product requires measurement in each all collection, regardless of the reputation created.

As a limitation of the study, there is a difference in the moments when the interviews were done. In 2016, in France, the context was low prices, while in 2017, in Brazil, there was a rise in prices. This difference could have influenced some responses to the interviews, mainly about efficiency by producers.

Reputation, protecion of property rights by measurement and information sharing allows reduction costs (transaction, measurement and negotiation costs). This efficiency implies improvement to the system, in cases of milk producers and processors.

Improvements in the dairy system can have repercussions on several other improvements such as better distribution of income among agents in the chain; better-paid producers, which implies the improving quality of lives of these people; better products offered to consumers.

From a complementary perspective of transaction cost economics and measurement cost economics, reputation and protection of property rights are discussed with a focus on efficiency. Empirically, the paper contains heterogeneous data collected from two countries: Brasil and France.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

There is a great reliance on fiscal incentives to sustain the automotive industry competitiveness due to several structural problems, among them the inefficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to compare the supply chain structure of traditional automotive industry with the supply chains from South Korea and China. Based on strategic decision and transaction cost theory, this comparison seeks to exploit the factors that led to the inefficiency of automotive supply chains.

The authors used a qualitative approach and applied a multi-method research. They conducted semi-structured interviews with six executives from automakers representing the selected countries, carried individual meetings during one workshop and used secondary data from several sources.

Concepts identified in the research such as reliability, supply chain governance and automaker competencies led the authors to propose that the traditional automakers have higher transaction costs when compared to the new automakers due to the horizontal structure of their supply chain. While new competitors have vertical upstream supply chains, which indicates better profitability, traditional automotive industry is horizontal, depends on fewer Tier 1 suppliers and is disconnected from Tier 2, impacting negatively in the transaction costs and supply chain management.

This study suggests that automotive executives rethink the current upstream supply chain model by identifying the competencies required for their current and future competitiveness and implementing a vertical integration of these competencies.

This research exploited the inefficiency of supply chain as one of the explanations for the low competitiveness of the national automotive industry.

The division of labor of e-commerce transaction system is an important research topic. However, there is a certain disparity between the current mainstream research model and the reality, which leads to a biased result. This paper aims to find the effects of transaction efficiency on the evolution of e-commerce transaction system’s division of labor and the relationships between the results and other parameters.

This paper puts forward a definition of transaction efficiency based on transaction services and establishes a model of middleman’s specialized production decision of transaction services on this basis.

The research results show that the transaction efficiency plays an important role on the change of middlemen’s division of labor level. The degree of economic specialization, price of commodities and transaction services and other associated factors also affect middlemen’s division of labor.

This paper is of great significance for evaluating the development level and forecast the development direction of e-commerce.

This paper aims to understand the significant farm and market-level factors that incentivize the adoption and marketing of pulses influencing its supply response to changing demand.

The authors first use a modified Nerlovian supply response model using secondary data to identify the major price and non-price factors influencing the supply of pigeon pea, black and green gram in the major pulses growing states in India. Second, using primary qualitative data the authors map the pulses value chain from farm to retail to identify the how proportional and fixed transaction costs (FCTs) influence market participation of pulses growers and limit the transmission of price and quality information.

The supply response model shows some positive influence of price on area allocation for pigeon pea and black gram and some negative effects of yield and price increase of competing crops on pigeon pea acreage. However, for the most part, the area of Kharif pulses is inelastic to prices in the long run. Irrigation, rainfall and yields in the lag year are shown to have a significant influence on area allocation for pulses. The market study reveals that low yields, low landholding size and geographical disadvantages of high agro-climatic risk and poor connectivity hinder market access of pulses farmers relative to other crops. Market power in favor of buyers and poor price and quality information is a disadvantage to sellers, influencing their ability to participate in markets.

A quantitative study would be required to identify the magnitude of farm and market-level transaction costs.

This study helps to understand the supply response of pulses and gives suggestions to direct policy to rectify this.