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date: 31 March 2020

Abstract and Keywords

Organization theory has displayed a remarkable creativity during its roughly 100 years of existence. But even if organization theory is interdisciplinary, it remains a stubborn fact that most research on organizations is carried out within distinct disciplines and according to disciplinary traditions. This article presents the concept of organizational economics. The main focus of this article is on transaction cost analysis, agency analysis, and also the evolutionary, game theoretical and property rights perspectives. This is followed by a presentation of the way that firms have been studied in economic sociology, and here the article discusses the Weberian heritage in organizational sociology, the focus on firms in this type of sociology and the role that culture and meaning plays in it. Finally, this article concludes with a brief discussion of the antagonism between organizational economics and the sociology of organizations, and how this antagonism perhaps can be overcome.

Keywords: organization theory, organizational economics, transaction cost analysis, agency analysis, property rights perspectives

Richard Swedberg

Richard Swedberg is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. His two areas of specialization are economic sociology and social theory. His books include: The Handbook of Economic Sociology (edited with Neil Smelser, 1994, 2005), Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (1998), and Principles of Economic Sociology (2003). He is currently working on a study of Tocqueville and economics.

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