Nathalie Lazaric

Trust and Economic Learning

Trust and Economic Learning brings together innovative research by an internationally recognised group of scholars from Europe and the United States. The distinction between trust and a variety of related concepts, including reputation, implicit contracts and confidence is examined.

Articulation and codification of collective know-how in the steel industry: evidence from blast furnace control in France

Abstract In this article, we use the implementation of an expert system to improve blast furnace control in the French steel industry to illustrate the problem of knowledge articulation/codification. Blast furnace related knowledge still largely takes the form of empirical know-how in general and expert know-how tied to specific individuals in particular. Therefore, the articulation/codification of knowledge in this field is a difficult task requiring the identification and selection of ‘best practices’ for the purpose of codification. This process, in turn, affects daily routines and creates new forms of generic knowledge that make use of local knowledge. These new forms of generic information reinforce the tendency to appropriate private knowledge currently prevailing in Usinor, a large French steel company, and create new routes and new insights for R&D policy.

Organizational routines and cognition: an introduction to empirical and analytical contributions

This article introduces this special issue on routines. It offers some suggestions as to why the concept of routines is considered central in methodological considerations of capabilities and organizational evolution. The contributors to this special issue propose various analytical tools, and provide some missing pieces from the puzzle related to the prominent role of routines. Issues discussed in the papers include methodological individualism. Routines lie between the individual and the firm levels of analysis because they are enacted by individuals in a social context. It is also suggested that a multilevel research agenda provides a finer grained analysis because organizational routines are not isolated units but are entangled among the various organizational layers.

Overcoming inertia: insights from evolutionary economics into improved energy and climate policies

The ‘efficiency paradox’ has generated controversy and suggests that mainstream economics is not neutral in the way it deals with climate change. An alternative economic framework, evolutionary economics, is used to investigate this crucial issue and offer insights into the development of a complementary framework for designing climate policy and for managing the transition to a low-carbon society. The evolutionary framework allows us to identify the presence of two sources of inertia (i.e. at the individual level through ‘habits’ and at the level of socio-technical systems) that mutually reinforce each other in a path-dependent manner. To overcome ‘carbon lock-in’, decision-makers should design measures (e.g. commitment strategies, niche management) that specifically target those change-resisting factors, as they tend to reduce the efficiency of traditional instruments. A series of recommendations for policy-makers is provided.

Beyond Routines as Things: Introduction to the Special Issue on Routine Dynamics

Research on routines has grown in recent years as scholars have increasingly recognized the centrality of this organizational phenomenon (Parmigiani and Howard-Grenville, 2011; Salvato and Rerup, 2011). This special issue is devoted to routine dynamics, one branch of research on routines that is based in the idea that routines are practices with internal dynamics that contribute to both stability and change in organizations (Feldman and Pentland, 2003). Ethnographic fieldwork has been an important source of observations from which routine dynamics has emerged

Handbook of Knowledge and Economics

Why do societies benefit differently from knowledge? How exactly does social interaction interfere with knowledge acquisition and diffusion? This original Handbook brings together a wide range of differing approaches to shed light on these questions and others relating to the role and relevance of knowledge in economic analysis. By illuminating the philosophical roots of the various notions of knowledge employed by economists, this Handbook helps to disentangle conceptual and typological issues surrounding the debate on knowledge amongst economists. Wide-ranging in scope, it explores fundamental aspects of the relationship between knowledge and economics - such as the nature of knowledge, knowledge acquisition and knowledge diffusion. This important compendium embraces various fields and traditions of economic analysis and discusses the role of knowledge in 21 papers from outstanding international scholars. Advanced scholars and PhD students interested in cross-fertilization between different fields of economic analysis will find this Handbook of considerable importance.

The Coordination and Codification of Knowledge Inside a Network, or the Building of an Epistemic Community: The Telecom Valley Case Study

The ‘knowledge economy’ is a concept commonly deemed too ambiguous and elusive to hold any significance in current economic debate. This valuable book seeks to refute that myth. Presenting an important collection of views, from a number of leading scholars, this innovative volume visibly demonstrates that knowledge and information are a prime resource in driving the dynamics of an economy.

Advancing Empirical Research on Organizational Routines: Introduction

This book showcases advanced empirical research that applies the concept of organizational routines to understanding organizations and how they change and evolve.

Habit, decision making, and rationality : comparing Veblen and early Herbert Simon

Abstract: The article aims to contribute to the convergence between institutional and neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economics. It intends to help unify the behavioral foundations of these two strands of thought by returning to the original views of their main historical inspirations. It thus proposes a comparative analysis of the theory of human behavior developed by Thorstein Veblen and Herbert Simon, respectively. The article notably discusses how Simon’s early work links together the notions of habit, rationality, and the decision-making process, and explores the extent to which his views are consistent with, complementary to, or divergent from Veblen’s. The article highlights several commonalities between Simon and Veblen’s views on habits. However, Simon departs from Veblen in developing a dual model of human behavior which clearly differentiates habit-based from decision-based behaviors. The article argues that neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economists should go beyond this binary model and build on the pragmatist-Veblenian approach, in which these two dimensions are intimately entangled. This process could allow the economists in question to take advantage of the most valuable insights of institutional economics regarding the interactions between individual choices and habits and institutions.

Defense firms adapting to major changes in the French R&D funding system

Abstract The structural changes inside the French innovation system have impacted the role of defense firms since the late 1980s. Major changes have affected the defense budget and public R&D funding system in particular. The aim of this article is to understand French defense firms’ repositioning within the National Innovation System (NIS) based on an analysis of their R&D behavior over a long period of time (1987–2010). We show that French defense firms remain major players in the NIS and faced up to these major changes by adapting the funding of their R&D and their research priorities and rolling out new innovation capabilities. Additionally, they developed new innovation models to take advantage of new collaborative partnerships developed for civil and military markets.