danish research unit for industrial dynamics druid working paper no ...

112. Dynamics of agreements and production of knowledge: some openquestionsThe aim of our contribution is to try to offer an alternative perspective from transactionscost economics (TCE) by focusing on the way problem solving and competence gaps, pushfor the association of dissimilar activities. This point is important for explaining thestability and evolution of the T form - "temporary forms" according to Williamson'sterminology (Williamson, 1995). According to us, the TCE perspective misses twoimportant points for the correct understanding of inter-firms relations. As underlined byBrousseau (1996) and Lazaric and Wolff (1996), transactions cost theory falls short ofaccounting for institutional dynamics, as its perspective is a comparatively static one.Organisational forms are not really examined in their evolution and historical developmentbut compared under the hypothesis that static efficiency properties are sufficient to explaintheir selection.According to us this theoretical background, though indeed very relevant, is not sufficientfor the analysis of path-dependent processes of organisational adaptation. The very idea ofselecting the most efficient organisational form is rather ambiguous, for on the one handboundedly rational agents can hardly be capable of selecting the most efficientorganisational form, and, on the other hand, the capabilities of the market mechanisms forperforming such selection has been widely questioned (cf., for instance, Winter (1986)).TCE assumes that agents can select ex-ante the best governance structure minimisingtransaction costs (Brousseau, 1996), whereas selection occurs with multiple and nestedselection criteria (e.g. organisational coherence, problem-solving, social interaction,technological learning,.... cf. Dosi, 1995).Secondly, learning is described by TCE through the concept of “remediableness” (if agentsselect an inefficient organisational form, they have the possibility of changing it). In ourview, this concept is not sufficient to explain the context of learning embedded inorganisational arrangements (competency trap, organisational inertia, cf. Levinthal, 1992).We argue that learning cannot be described only by the minimisation of transactions costsand has to be understood within a perspective of knowledge building, with the possibility of