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Organizational Learning and Institutional Embeddedness

An Introduction to the Diverse Evolutionary Paths of Modern Corporations

  • Chapter
Organization and Strategy in the Evolution of the Enterprise

Abstract

This book can be read from a variety of angles. One is from the point of view of its contribution to an emerging theory of the firm based on the problem-solving competences that organizations embody. From another angle, one may appreciate what it adds to the understanding of the variety in the patterns of evolution of business corporations in different countries. Yet from another perspective, it may be considered a contribution to the analysis of how the broader institutional context shapes and constrains corporate strategies and organizational change. Indeed, our suggestion is that these perspectives are highly complementary, unified by what we shall call, paraphrasing Richard Nelson, a theory of coevolution linking organizational forms, technologies and institutions. Admittedly, one is still far from the full development of such a theory: however, contributions like those contained in this volume suggest, in our view, the promises of the research programme and the constructiveness of a dialogue between historians, economists and scholars from other social disciplines, whereby theories and historical analyses mutually enrich each other. It is a dialogue which runs from ‘foundational issues’ — concerning, for example, what is the nature of business organizations, what degree of rationality one should attribute to economic agents, etc. — all the way to the ‘grand’ historical conjectures on the determinants of the broad patterns of socio-economic organizations as we observe them. It is this thread that we shall explore in this introduction.

Most of the contributions to this volume were originally presented in their draft form at the Fourth International Week on the History of Enterprise, ‘Organization and Strategy in the Evolution of the Enterprise’, organized by the ASSI Foundation in Milan. Italy, 3–5 October 1991. Earlier drafts of some of the papers have been published in Industrial and Corporate Change. The ICC Association. Milan, has supported the final editing of this volume.

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Authors
  1. Giovanni Dosi
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  2. Franco Malerba
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universitá La Sapienza, Rome, Italy

    Giovanni Dosi (Professor of Applied Economics) (Professor of Applied Economics)

  2. Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

    Franco Malerba (Associate Professor of Industrial Economics) (Associate Professor of Industrial Economics)

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© 1996 Associazione di Storia e Studi sull’Impressa

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Dosi, G., Malerba, F. (1996). Organizational Learning and Institutional Embeddedness. In: Dosi, G., Malerba, F. (eds) Organization and Strategy in the Evolution of the Enterprise. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13389-5_1

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