[Chap. 1] Finding our way in the jungle: insights from organization theory

Claude Ménard (1, 2)

1 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
2 UP1 UFR02 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - École d'économie de la Sorbonne

This contribution is about the variety of modalities of coordination of economic activities, with application to the agri-food sector. Building on recent developments in organization theory and institutional analysis, it explores two dimensions along which coordination operates: it proposes an extended transactional model to explain the variety of coordination devices, with a special emphasis on contracts and their role in hybrid arrangements; and it characterizes the different layers composing the institutional setting in which these arrangements are embedded, with an emphasis on the long ignored or neglected role of the intermediate, ‘meso-institutional’ layer. Insights are also provided on the technological background to coordination and on some policy issues.

Keywords: transaction; contracts; property rights; hybrids organizations; meso-institutions

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Claude Ménard. [Chap. 1] Finding our way in the jungle: insights from organization theory. Gaetano Martino, Konstantinos Karantininis, Stefano Pascucci, Liesbeth Dries and Jean Marie Codron (eds). It’s a jungle out there – the strange animals of economic organization in agri-food value chains, Wageningen Academic Publishers, pp.27-50, 2017, 978-90-8686-301-3. ⟨10.3920/978-90-8686-844-5_1⟩. ⟨hal-04010957⟩