Why do firms exist? Ronald Coase, - the eminent British economist and University of Chicago professor, - addressed this question in The Nature of the Firm, - a seminal paper published in 1937 which along with other major achievements earned him the 1991 Nobel Prize in economics.
Professor Coase explained that, in principle, a firm should be able to find the cheapest, most productive, highest quality goods and services by contracting them out in an efficient, open marketplace. However, markets are not perfectly fluid. Transaction costs are a kind of friction incurred in obtaining goods and services outside the firm, such as searching for the right supply chain partners, establishing a trusted relationship, negotiating a contract, coordinating the work, managing intellectual property and so on. Firms came into being to make it easier and less costly to get work done.
A recent IBM report, - Fast forward: Rethinking enterprises, ecosystems and economies with blockchains, - harks back to Coase’s paper to analyze the potential value of blockchains. The report notes that while transaction costs are lower within firms, “in recent years as enterprises have scaled, the added complexity of operations has grown exponentially while revenue growth has remained linear. The result? At a certain point, organizations are faced with diminishing returns. Blockchains have the potential to eradicate the cost of complexity and ultimately redefine the traditional boundaries of an organization.”
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