Knowledge Inputs, Legal Institutions and Firm Structure: Towards a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm

Corporate scholars rely on traditional theories of the firm to analyze corporate organization and corporate contracting. Traditional theories of the firm, however, have long neglected the role of knowledge in shaping the internal structure of firms. Current analyses of firm structure that rely on these theories therefore suffer from serious shortcomings. This paper begins to address this gap by analyzing knowledge resources and investigating their influence on internal corporate governance structures. We propose a new typology that explains firm internal governance structure based on the types of knowledge used in the production process. We analyze the interaction of law and knowledge management. We investigate how firms can bind knowledge by means of patents, trade secrets and private contracting, such as covenants not to compete. We propose a principle of efficient knowledge allocation, which holds that organizational structures result from the necessity to maximize the use of knowledge resources. We discuss specific hazards that emerge from transactions with knowledge inputs. We discuss particular applications of the typology. We show how the management of knowledge resources required in mass production, high tech and law firms differentially affects the decisional hierarchies of these firms and also their compensation structure in certain instances. We argue that knowledge resources drove the change in the organizational structure of mass production firms from the U-form to the M-form, affecting decision making rights. We show how the adoption of stock options plans in high tech firms aims at constraining knowledge hazards. Stock options prevent leakage by retaining individual knowledge and discouraging hoarding of knowledge. We argue that the model of profit splitting and the hierarchy between partners and associates in law firms are also explained by the necessity of maximizing the use of knowledge resources. We then examine how the change of knowledge types used in law firms is affecting their organization. Finally, we investigate how certain business transactions like mergers, joint ventures and licensing contracts are shaped by knowledge inputs. We show that knowledge considerations provide a positive explanation for firm structure and a normative view in that the principle of efficient knowledge allocation should be an important concern of policy makers concerned with corporate reform

Litigation Discovery and Corporate Governance: The Missing Story About the Genius of American Corporate Law

Strikingly absent from the entire corporate governance and corporate litigation debate is a unique feature of American civil procedure that deserves special attention: the modern civil discovery regime. This Article attempts to fill this gap. We argue that modern discovery, first established by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, has had a profound impact on the evolution of shareholder litigation, corporate governance, and the culture of corporate disclosure in the United States

Business Lobbying as an Informational Public Good: Can Tax Deductions for Lobbying Expenses Promote Transparency?

The view that “lobbying is essentially an informational activity” has persistently served the suggestion that lobbying provides a public good by educating legislators about policy and the consequences of legislation. In this article, we link a proposed tax reform with a substantive disclosure requirement to promote the kind of “information subsidy” that serves the public interest, while mitigating – at least to some extent – the distortion that may result from the imbalance of financial resources on the business side and other institutional contraints identified in the literature. We argue that corporate lobbying should be encouraged – by allowing business to deduct lobbying expenses – but only to the extent that the information subsidy that corporate lobbying supplies in fact educates lawmakers on complex policy issues. In other words, to the extent that lobbying supplies an informational public good, such information should actually be made generally available through full and timely publication, rather than inserted strategically into the legislative process at a time, and in such manner, that excludes others from using the information to assess the merits of proposed legislation

Beitrag zur Lehre vom Icterus neonatorum : Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doctors der Medicin

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2447887~S1*es

Activism, affect, identification: trans documentary in France and Spain and its reception

This article explores the documentation of trans activism in France and Spain since the 2000s. The first part addresses questions surrounding the place of affect and narrative in documentary film, particularly in relation to trans issues. The second part o f the article analyses an audience case study from a screening at the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Barcelona of Valérie Mitteaux's Girl or Boy, My Sex is not my Gender (2011), considering how different viewers respond to the representatio n of trans identities. The article builds on qualitative research whilst extending the exploration of sexuality and gender in previous audience studies to a consideration of documentary film, seeking to provide a more nuanced understanding of what audience claims for identification in politicised contexts mean

Centerscope

Centerscope, formerly Scope, was published by the Boston University Medical Center "to communicate the concern of the Medical Center for the development and maintenance of improved health care in contemporary society.

Trans youth, science and art: creating (trans) gendered space

This article is based on empirical research which was undertaken as part of the Sci:dentity project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Sci:dentity was a year-long participatory arts project which ran between March 2006 and March 2007. The project offered 18 young transgendered and transsexual people, aged between 14 and 22, an opportunity to come together to explore the science of sex and gender through art. This article focuses on four creative workshops which ran over two months, being the ‘creative engagement’ phase of the project. It offers an analysis of the transgendered space created which was constituted through the logics of recognition, creativity and pedagogy. Following this, the article explores the ways in which these transgendered and transsexual young people navigate gendered practices, and the gendered spaces these practices constitute, in their everyday lives shaped by gendered and sexual normativities. It goes on to consider the significance of trans virtual and physical cultural spaces for the development of trans young peoples' ontological security and their navigations and negotiations of a gendered social world