Enterprise Alliance: An Introduction to Regulatory Structure Theory

Author: Yuan Anzhao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-08-01
Features: Regulatory structure originally refers to three forms of institutional arrangements in enterprises, relationship contracting, and markets. This book discusses the ideas of pioneers in regulatory structure theory and the latest developments, highlighting the relationship between these theories and influential trends in current management theory. It analyzes the shortcomings of Williamson's regulatory theory and, based on the latest developments in regulatory structure theory, proposes a regulatory structure theory grounded in complexity to explain the knowledge nature of enterprises. It examines the general process of corporate evolution and places organizational learning at the core of regulatory structure theory. Furthermore, it applies regulatory structure theory to analyze intermediate regulatory structures—primarily dealing with hybrid forms of transactions such as franchising, joint ventures, and other non-standard contracting forms. Regulatory structure theory is essentially also a theory of organizational design, but traditional organizational design theory fails to describe corporate alliances, while the expanded regulatory structure theory in this book provides greater explanatory scope for organizational phenomena.