Integration →

Iterative Coordination and Innovation

Do Agile methodologies promote innovation? Results of a field experiment with Google show that increasing the frequency and goal orientation of stand-up meetings reinforces integration and value but reduces specialization and novelty in outcomes.

US Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective

Since the late 19th century, American antitrust law and policy has responded to multiple changes: technological advances that have transformed business structures, political imperatives that have reformed regulations and informed prosecutorial discretion, and economic theories that have reshaped the boundaries of government interventions into the economy. Today, antitrust remains a contested field.

Come Together: Firm Boundaries and Delegation

The study develops a simple model and provides new data to examine the relationship between vertical integration and delegation of decision-making, two critical aspects of a firm organizational design that are typically studied in isolation. The results show that delegation and vertical integration are positively correlated.

Explaining the Vertical-to-Horizontal Transition in the Computer Industry

This paper shows how the vertical-to-horizontal transition in the computer industry was an organizational response to a change in economic rewards brought by the competing technologies of rationalized step processes and open platform systems. The spread of modular architectures—and the rapid pace of change in semiconductor technology—shifted the balance of rewards away from predictability toward flexibility.

The Ties that Bind: Railroad Gauge Standards, Collusion, and Internal Trade in the 19th Century US

The author studies the conversion of 13,000 miles of railroad track to standard gauge in the southern United States in 1886 as a large-scale natural experiment in technology standards adoption that instantly integrated the South into the national transportation network.