The New Economics of Organization
The New Economics of Organization
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新组织经济学
DOI：
10.2307/2110997
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发表时间：
1984
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
T. Moe
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
T. Moe
在过去十年左右的时间里，经济学领域出现了一种研究组织的重要新方法。它的三个特征可能是最好的：对组织关系的契约观点，对等级控制的理论关注，以及通过委托-代理模型进行的正式分析。本文为政治学家提供了“新组织经济学”的概述，并探讨了其对公共官僚主义研究的启示。到目前为止，实证政治理论对我们理解公共官僚制的贡献不大。在某种程度上，这是由于理性建模和大多数其他定量分析模式长期以来一直受到公共行政学生的冷漠对待。然而，硬币的另一面是，实证理论家并没有做出太多努力来发展官僚主义理论。他们的关注点集中在社会选择的两种基本机制上，即投票和市场，而他们很少系统性地关注第三种机制，这一机制对于理解社会和其他群体如何做出集体决策显然很重要。第三种相对未被探索的机制是等级制度。向积极的等级理论发展将填补社会选择文献中的一个严重空白，同时对公共官僚主义的本质做出理论贡献，实际上是对所有组织的本质。事实上，最近已经朝着积极的等级制理论迈出了重要的一步——但是是经济学家，而不是政治科学家。当然，在一段时间之前，少数经济学家对公共官僚主义的研究做出了贡献，如Downs（1967）、Tullock（1965）和Niskanen（1971）的开创性著作。但是这一波新的理论工作是不同的。它已经是一个庞大而复杂的文献体系，是越来越多经济学家创新和兴奋的焦点，它反映了不同寻常程度的理论一致性和累积努力。这一传统的工作倾向于从一种独特的经济方法中获得组织分析的方向，这种方法的最佳特征可能是三个要素：对组织关系的契约观点，对等级控制的关注，以及通过委托代理模型进行的正式分析。这种方法是从最近尝试超越新古典的企业理论中产生的，新古典的企业理论假设了所有的组织因素，而经济组织理论可以解释为什么公司、公司和其他企业的行为是这样的。Propo
Over the last ten years or so, an important new approach to the study of organizations has emerged within economics. It is perhaps best characterized by three elements: a contractual perspective on organizational relationships, a theoretical focus on hierarchical control, and formal analysis via principal-agent models. This paper provides political scientists with an overview of the "new economics of organization" and explores its implications for the study of public bureaucracy. So far, positive political theory has not contributed much to our understanding of public bureaucracy. In part this is due to the unsympathetic treatment that rational modeling and most other modes of quantitative analysis have long received from students of public administration. The other side of the coin, however, is that positive theorists have not made much of an effort to develop theories of bureaucracy. Their concerns have centered around two basic mechanisms of social choice, voting and markets, and they have devoted little systematic attention to a third mechanism that is clearly important for understanding how societies and other aggregates make collective decisions. This third and relatively unexplored mechanism is hierarchy. Movement toward a positive theory of hierarchies would fill a serious gap in the social choice literature, while at the same time making a theoretical contribution that strikes to the essence of public bureaucracy, indeed of all organizations. In fact, significant steps toward a positive theory of hierarchies have very recently been taken-but by economists, not political scientists. In small numbers, of course, economists made contributions to the study of public bureaucracy some time ago with the pioneering works of Downs (1967), Tullock (1965), and Niskanen (1971). But this new wave of theoretical work is different. It is already a large, complex body of literature that is the focus of innovation and excitement among a growing number of economists, and it reflects an unusual degree of theoretical coherence and cumulative effort. Work in this tradition tends to receive orientation from a distinctive economic approach to the analysis of organizations, an approach perhaps best characterized by three elements: a contractual perspective on organizational relationships, a focus on hierarchical control, and formal analysis via principal-agent models. This approach has emerged from recent attempts to move beyond the neoclassical theory of the firm, which assumes away all organizational considerations, to a theory of economic organizations that can explain why firms, corporations, and other enterprises behave as they do. Propo