Cognition and Motivation in the Theory of the Firm: Interaction or "Never the Twain Shall Meet"?

By N. J. Foss. 2004

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Economics in general, and the theory of the firm more specifically, places motivation and cognition in very different analytical boxes, in spite of cognitive science evidence that the boundaries between the two are in reality blurred. While this analytical assumption has often served the theory of the firm well, a number of organizational phenomena are better understood if cognition and motivation are allowed to interact, for example, through framing effects, as organizational scholars have long argued. The paper exemplifies by developing the implications of this for Williamsons notion of the impossibility of selective intervention.théorie de la firme en particulier placent la motivation et la connaissance dans des boites analytiques très différentes, en dépit de preuves scientifiques affirmant que les deux se confondent dans la réalité. Même si cette hypothèse analytique a souvent été utile dans la théorie de la firme, certains phénomènes organisationnels sont mieux compris si on permet à la connaissance et à la motivation de réagir réciproquement, par exemple à travers des effets dencadrement comme les théoriciens des organisations le soutiennent depuis longtemps. Ce papier illustre cette interaction en développant les implications de leffet dencadrement pour la notion dimpossibilité dintervention sélective de Williamson.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d63ca5e4c812d5ccae9fcd722414b48820d0efa4

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Citations in the corpus

Scientific Progress in Strategic Management: The Case of the Resource-Based View (2007, unknown): “18 At the AoM meetings in 2004 at which Felin and Foss (2005) was presented, several members of the audience argued that the emphasis in that paper on micro-foundations were not relevant to strategic analysis, because all sustainable heterogeneity was located at the collective level.”
The Next Step in the Evolution of the RBV: Integration with Transaction Cost Economics (2004, background): “” 6 For an attempt to contest this view, see Foss (2000).”
New Institutional Economics: The Theory of the Firm and Its Critics: A Stocktaking and Assessment (2005, background): “Indeed, many critics have observed that to the extent that bounded rationality enters the theory of the firm, it is in rather “thin” forms (e.g., Macleod 2000; Foss 2003).”
Resources and Transaction Costs: How the Economics of Property Rights Furthers the Resource-based View (2004, unknown): “Applying the Economics of Property Rights to Strategic Management The EPR has only been explicitly applied to the strategic management field in a few previous papers (Mahoney 1992; Foss and Foss 2000; Kim and Mahoney 2002; Foss 2003), although property rights notions appear in the analysis of the st”
Knowledge and Organization in the Theory of the Multinational Corporation: Some Foundational Issues (2006, background): “2 For a fuller discussion and critique, see Foss (2003).”
Institutions as Knowledge Capital: Ludwig M. Lachmann’s Interpretative Institutionalism (2006, background): “Citation for published version (APA): Foss, N. J., & Garzarelli, G. (2006). Institutions as Knowledge Capital: Ludwig M.”