Modularity in technology and organization

This paper is an attempt to raid both the literature on modular design and the literature on property rights to create the outlines of a modularity theory of the firm. Such a theory will look at firms, and other organizations, in terms of the partitioning of rights—understood as protected spheres of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of economic behavior & organization Vol. 49; no. 1; pp. 19 - 37
Main Author Langlois, Richard N.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 01.09.2002
Elsevier
SeriesJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Subjects
Capabilities
Economic behaviour
Economics
Firm theory
Modularity
Organization
Organization theory
Property rights
Technology
Transaction costs
D23
Property rights
Capabilities
L22
Modularity
Transaction costs
Standards
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Summary:This paper is an attempt to raid both the literature on modular design and the literature on property rights to create the outlines of a modularity theory of the firm. Such a theory will look at firms, and other organizations, in terms of the partitioning of rights—understood as protected spheres of authority—among cooperating parties. And it will assert that organizations reflect nonmodular structures, that is, structures in which decision rights, rights of alienation, and residual claims to income do not all reside in the same hands.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/S0167-2681(02)00056-2