[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/ejessy/0121.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Cognitive Theory of the Firm

Author

Listed:
  • Nooteboom, Bart

    (Tilburg University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract
This paper reviews and criticizes existing theories of the firm, which take a technical or a governance perspective. One point of criticism is that they do not offer an adequate treatment of learning and innovation, while such treatment is of high priority. With some exceptions, existing governance theories, in economics, neglect the importance of trust. This paper offers a cognitive theory to deal with learning, innovation, and trust. It also incorporates technical and governance perspectives, but emphasizes a competence perspective, in "dynamic capabilities" of innovation and learning. On the basis of a constructivist theory of knowledge, it offers the notion of "cognitive distance", and proposes that the boundaries of the firm result from the determination of "optimal cognitive distance". This is achieved by a "cognitive focus", yielding the notion of a firm as a "focusing device".

Suggested Citation

  • Nooteboom, Bart, 2005. "A Cognitive Theory of the Firm," European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, Lavoisier, vol. 18(1), pages 29-59.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:ejessy:0121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ejess.revuesonline.com/article.jsp?articleId=6193
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technical and governance views; Cognitive theory; Innovation; Knowledge; Learning; Trust; Competence; Dynamic capabilities; Cognitive distance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:ejessy:0121. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Stefano Lucarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://ejess.revuesonline.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.