Oliver E. Williamson Quotes.
Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing.
The study of economic organization commonly proceeds as though market and administrative modes of organization were disjunct. Market organiВzation is the province of economists. InterВnal organization is the concern of organization theory specialist. And never the twain shall meet.
The presumption that an extant mode is efficient if the expected net gain is negative can nevertheless be rebutted by showing that the obstacles to implementing an otherwise superior feasible alternative are ‘unfair.’
The organization of the government itself is something which we ought to examine in a more self-conscious way – the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The mission that each of them has is mainly economic but should be informed by good organizational practices.
Teaching can be learning, especially if student curiosity with the question ‘What’s going on here?’ can be elicited.
If you believe that markets operate in Alan Greenspan fashion, then you don’t inquire into the details.
The hypothesis that economic organization is the resultant of a series of historic accidents is intructive in that many organizational innovations appear to be the result of trial and error.
The lens of contract focuses predominantly on gains from trade whereas orthodoxy is focused on resource allocation.
My initial thoughts of becoming a lawyer changed in high school as I became more attracted to math and science and began talking about being an engineer.
My first jobs after graduation in 1955 were as a project engineer for G.E. and later with the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., where I met and married my wife, Dolores Celini.
My university teacher and mentor Kenneth Arrow remembers me as a student who asked good questions. Although I had not previously thought of myself in that way, on reflection I think that Arrow was right.
Ronald Coase, in his classic 1937 paper on ‘The Nature of the Firm,’ was the first to bring the concept of transaction costs to bear on the study of firm and market organization.
