文章基本信息

标题：Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms
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作者：Carlo Altomonte ; Gianmarco Ottaviano ; Armando Rungi 等
期刊名称：CEP Discussion Paper
出版年度：2022
卷号：2022
语种：English
出版社：Centre for Economic Performance
摘要：Hierarchical differentiation is a cornerstone of the organizing process. In this paper, we do three things. First, exploiting a newly assembled dataset, we provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarchical differentiation across Business Groups (BGs), highlighting the co-existence of different hierarchical shapes. Second, we show how the different shapes can arise as optimal hierarchical structures in a knowledge-based model of BGs when subsidiaries' operations involve ubiquitous problem solving under parents' supervision. Three primitive characteristics of a BG determine its optimal choice of hierarchical structure: production efficiency and two dimensions of problem solving efficiency related to supervising knowledge creation and handling associated communication across subsidiaries. Third, we check the consistency of the model's predictions with the empirical patterns for Europe, the US, and the world. The model successfully passes the consistency test.
关键词：business groups;knowledge hierarchies;multinational enterprises;organisation of production