Description
Book SynopsisDonald W. Katzner explores concepts, their properties, and the implications of those properties that underlie many of the current approaches to the economics of firm organization. The book examines these matters in important new ways and in ways that have not been fully considered in the existing literature.
Topics covered include authority structures, the social interaction (including supervision) among employees required to fulfill the responsibilities of their jobs, participatory decision making to the extent that it occurs, the impact of time, and certain kinds of complexity and efficiency, all of which are fundamental to analyses of the internal organization of the economic firm. The author provides a clear and extensive presentation of the basic ideas, and examines how they relate to the firm’s operation and profitability. He also develops and employs measures of the dimensions of pyramidal authority structures and analyzes the relationship between them.
This book should be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in the economic fundamentals of firm organization. It is relevant for an introductory graduate course in organization theory in economics departments and business schools. It will also appeal to scholars in such fields as sociology and psychology who work in organization theory from the perspective of their own disciplines.
Trade Review‘I am not going to buy a copy of Organization in the Economic Firm
: I am going to purchase two. One shall sit on my bookshelves, ready to be used when the other – which will be constantly on my desk for consultation – will be worn out. Don Katzner has managed to write yet another masterpiece.’ -- Roberto Veneziani, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Table of ContentsContents: Preface 1. Introduction to Organization in the Economic Firm PART I THE STRUCTURE OF AUTHORITY 2. Rank, level, and control 3. Height and thickness 4. Supervision 5. Time, order, and firm organization PART II ORGANIZATIONAL COMPLEXITY 6. Complexity and responsiveness 7. Complexity, output, and profit PART III PARTICIPATION IN DECISION MAKING 8. Collective decision making 9. Participatory decision making 10. The location of decision making 11. The need to restructure PART IV ORGANIZATIONAL EFFICIENCY 12. Administrative efficiency 13. Allocative efficiency 14. The efficiency of organizational forms 15. Conclusion to Organization in the Economic Firm Index
