Pisa, 13-14 November 2009

Location: Pisa / Italy, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (www.sssup.it)
Organisers: Luigi Marengo (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) and Pierre Garrouste (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne)

NEW :

• Download the workshop report
• Papers presented at the workshop can be downloaded from : https://mail.sssup.it/~l.marengo/WP11/WP11Program.htm

The increasing importance of knowledge generation in organizations has been subject to intense scrutiny. In the face of the different dimensions that knowledge creation and diffusion entail, for instance its collective character, social communities are now understood as the suitable units for analysing knowledge-related social processes. The importance of such analysis is highlighted by the emergence of new forms of coordination for knowledge production and distribution that overcome the traditional dichotomy between hierarchies and markets, such as in peer-to-peer production, distribution networks, and more generally social communities.

However, the dynamics of social communities, inside and outside the traditional domain of the firm, has thus far been analysed, almost exclusively, from the viewpoint of incentives. It is not to say that the incentive dimension of the knowledge based-organizations is irrelevant, but indeed the relationships between incentives, motivations and learning within organizations, are, indeed, far from being fully understood. Even if economists have recently reconsidered, especially because of the challenge offered by experimental evidence, the role of incentives and motivations and their interactions, their role in knowledge generation and diffusion is still largely overlooked by the literature. In particular, models and theories, still under the influence of agency theory, lack the collective and organizational dimension that characterizes knowledge generation and diffusion in firms. The aim of this workshop is to offer a contribution to fostering theoretical, empirical and experimental research in this direction.

Examples of questions to be addressed in the workshop:

• What is the role of both hierarchy and worker autonomy and participation in the success of innovative organisations? Do they vary across innovation regimes?
• How do different motivations and identities interact with organisational forms?
• What does empirical evidence teach us about new organisational forms?
• How to clarify (model) the complex relationships between incentives and motivations?
• How is it possible to introduce the organizational dimension of learning in economics?

Workshop organisation

There will be about 4-5 invited papers. In addition, 5-7 papers will be selected for presentation from submitted papers.

So far the following invited speakers have confirmed participation:

• Edward Deci (University of Rochester)
• Massimo Egidi (LUISS Guido Carli)
• Bruno Frey (University of Zürich)

The workshop is organised within the context of the DIME network of excellence, WP 1.1 - Institutional Foundations of Knowledge Generation and Exchange.