| Dick Langlois |
Many many thanks to Mari Sako and Susan Helper for taking the time to comment on my post about their paper in ICC. To give the discussion more visibility, I am elevating my response to a new post.
My Vanishing Hand argument is an attempt to explain theoretically the demise of the large multi-unit Chandlerian enterprise, the essence of which was managerial coordination across vertically integrated stages of production. That is to say, my argument was about vertical disintegration. To assert that a more-disintegrated system still uses managerial coordination across firm boundaries is not to resurrect Chandler’s vision; it is to back away from Chandler’s vision. (I document Chandler’s vision, and its intellectual roots, with more care in the book than in the original “Vanishing Hand” paper.) My argument is fundamentally about vertical integration, and I have no problem with the idea that…
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