Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm

Description

Entrepreneurship, long neglected by economists and management scholars, has made a dramatic comeback in the last two decades, not only among academic economists and management scholars, but also among policymakers, educators and practitioners. Likewise, the economic theory of the firm, building on Ronald Coase's (1937) seminal analysis, has become an increasingly important field in economics and management. Despite this resurgence, there is still little connection between the entrepreneurship literature and the literature on the firm, both in academia and in management practice. This book fills this gap by proposing and developing an entrepreneurial theory of the firm that focuses on the connections between entrepreneurship and management. Drawing on insights from Austrian economics, it describes entrepreneurship as judgmental decision made under uncertainty, showing how judgment is the driving force of the market economy and the key to understanding firm performance and organization.

Nicolai J. Foss is Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Copenhagen Business School and Professor of Knowledge-based Value Creation at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. He also holds a number of part-time and visiting professorships at other European universities. Peter G. Klein is Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences and Director of the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Missouri. He also holds positions at the University of Missouri's Truman School of Public Affairs and the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration.

'It is about time entrepreneurship came into its own within economics, moving out of the mystical shadows of creative destruction and the magical imagination of the attentive entrepreneur into the more mundane and tractable reality unfolding in our empirical work. The actual content of entrepreneurial judgment has far reaching implications not only for theories of the firm, but more generally for economic organization. In this book, Foss and Klein have turned the corner on research (or lack thereof) into this important topic.' Saras Sarasvathy, Isadore Horween Research Associate Professor, University of Virginia 'This is a path breaking book. Foss and Klein connect the growing entrepreneurship literature with the rich theories of the organization. It offers important rich and original insights that will undoubtedly revise long held views of entrepreneurship in organizations and how managers make judgments about entrepreneurial initiatives. Well written and grounded in solid research, the book will surely inspire and enrich future scholarship.' Shaker A. Zahra, Department Chair, Robert E. Buuck Chair, and Professor of Strategic and Organization, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota 'Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment is a massive undertaking, and one that ambitiously spans the unnecessary divide between management studies and economics literature. For the scholar seriously contemplating exploiting this gap further, the book is highly recommended.' International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal