The Vanishing Hand: The Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism

Organizing the Modern Firm in the Worldwide Market for Market Transactions

“…Hence, the organization of the 'firm in the market' is our research frame (Pitelis 199;shipman 2002), and the distribution of factors of production for the organization of the firm is central to our explication. This orientation captures both the changing nature of the modern firm (Harvey 1989(Harvey , 1999langlois 2003) and of markets worldwide in the present context of increasing outsourcing and offshoring of economic activity.…”

Open standards, vertical disintegration and entrepreneurial opportunities: How vertically-specialized firms entered the U.S. semiconductor industry

“…Other scholars have focused on other forms of vertical disintegration such as those between modules in a physical system (Langlois, 1992;Langlois and Robertson, 1992;Baldwin and Clark, 2000;Christensen et al, 2002;Langlois, 2003Langlois, , 2007. Scholars explain the emergence of this vertical disintegration in terms of a growing market (Stigler, 1951), changes in transaction costs (Williamson, 1981;Baldwin, 2008) and capabilities (Teece and Pisano, 2007), and an interaction between them (Jacobides, 2005;Jacobides and Winter, 2005).…”

The Unrecognized Connection between Vertical Disintegration and Entrepreneurial Opportunities

“…These reductions in transaction costs can come from the emergence of open modular designs and open standards, from legal and regulatory changes, and from firm decisions (Langlois, 2003;Arora et al, 2001;Caves, 2002;Kenney, 2003;Steinmueller, 2003), events which can emerge in either a top-down or bottom-up process Jacobides and Winter, 2005). Modular designs are those in which the interfaces between the functional components (or 'modules') in a product or process design are specified in ways that enable the substitution of component variations.…”