Knowledge, capabilities and organizational processes: towards a useful representation of production ?
Submitted by chaves on 28 November, 2008 - 12:35.
DIME Workshop
Evolutionary Economics Group — Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
LEM — Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa
Jena, May 21-23, 2009
Call for contributions for the DIME WP 1.9
Within the 6th European Meeting on Applied Evolutionary Economics (EMAEE) on “Evolution, Behaviour and Organizations”, we call for papers that aim at exploring the theory of production, beyond the simplistic neo-classical production function. The papers will be presented and discussed in two thematic sessions. We seek for contributions that address some of the following concerns.
A fully–fledged and empirically relevant interpretation of technologies and their dynamics — that is, technological innovation — entails three complementary levels of analysis.
The first one pertains to the nature of knowledge upon which technological activities draw — including of course production. Dynamically, one studies the ways such a knowledge is accumulated and improved. The conception, design, and production of whatever artefact, however, involve (often very long) sequences of cognitive and physical acts. And, in turn, at a more detailed observation, at each step one finds a complex sequence of operations generally undertaken by different but coordinated people in association with different tools and machines. This second level of description, which we may call procedural, is deeply intertwined with the analysis of how business organizations actually work, since big ‘chunks’ of activities occur within single organizational entities rather than being mediated through the market. Third, these same activities — seen above in terms of sequences of procedure eliciting diverse type of knowledge — may be also described in terms of the list of inputs which come, under various headings, into the production process and of what finally comes out. This input–output description is of course the one most familiar to economists, with all refinements on the purported relations between inputs and outputs themselves featuring in ‘production functions’, ‘production possibility sets’, and the like.
In all that a crucial question regards the relationships between these three levels of analysis of production activities. We aim at organising the presentations such that these relationships can be fruitfully discussed. Each session will avail of at least one discussant who can cover the three levels of analysis.
Examples of topics for contributed papers (theoretical, empirical or conceptual):
- Production theory
- Fund–flow models and the timing of production
- Complexity, production and organization
- Division of labour and structural change
- Distribution of value, and production factors’ contribution
- Modes of production and institutions
- Knowledge and production
Submission of abstracts
To submit a paper for presentation at the DIME special sessions within the EMAEE 2009 conference, send an extended abstract of around 1,000 words to emaee2009@econ.mpg.de no later than January 31, 2009.
DIME Members
Travel and accommodation costs of DIME members will be covered according to standard DIME arrangements.
Advisory Committee
- Guido Buenstorf (Max Planck Institute of Economics)
- Tommaso Ciarli (Max Planck Institute of Economics)
- Patrick Llerena (Beta, University of Strasbourg)
- André Lorentz (Max Planck Institute of Economics)
- Luigi Marengo (LEM, Sant’Anna School)
- Maria Savona (SPRU, Sussex University)
- Marco Valente (LEM, Sant’Anna School)
