マーシャルにおける組織

生産の経済学の観点からの再評価

抄録

Abstract： Marshallsʼ economics has long been regarded as an abbreviated version of general equilibri-um theory by most students and scholars of economics. Despite the fact that those scholars of history of economic thought called as post-Marshallians have endeavored to show the text-book interpretation fails to capture the dynamic aspects of Marshallʼs economics, their ap-peals havenʼt been recognized even in a circle of historians of economic thoughts. Much needs to be done to rectify the present situation. We contend in this paper that the existence and role of firms in Marshallʼs economics is starkly different from those based on transac-tion-cost theory, which has been recognized as an applied and extended version of the stand-ard exchange theory. Whereas firms are interpreted as a cost-saving tool in transaction-cost theory, firms in Marshallʼs economics must be interpreted differently from the angle of plu-tology which means the economics of production. Their main functions are integration and coordination of production knowledge, through which firms become a sort of knowledge community. Firms cannot survive if they remain merely as a collection of production factors. For a firm to function as a knowledge community, Marshall thought that it also had to be a profit-sharing community of principal members of it at least. Marshallʼs view of firms has much in common with modern dynamic capabilities and resource-based approaches. JEL classification numbers: B13, B31.