I've heard this "transaction costs" argument before, and I'm still not
sure I understand it. Are you saying that the value of an organizational
system can be understood by looking at the individual transactions? Isn't
that approach like trying to understand an economic system by looking at
the individual buying and selling activities? (If so, how could one
explain inflation, or exchange rate fluctuations, for example?) It seems
to me that a transaction cost approach completely ignores the emergent
properties of complex systems, but perhaps you can explain that. Thanks.
Michael D. Kull (202)994-2153 http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mkull
Doctoral Fellow -- Management of Science, Technology, and Innovation
Department of Management Science, George Washington University 20052
On Sun, 23 Nov 1997, Simon Buckingham wrote:
> The transaction costs are only worth incurring, and 1+1= greater than 2,
> only if the benefits from that collaboration eg. new insights, learning,
> output, ideas outweigh the costs. It has to be a two-way street too for
> the colloraboration to be sustainable and repeatable- all collaborators
> have to gain something from it and that gain has to be at least worth
> their costs. I'm sure that if we stopped learning from being on this list,
> then we would unsubscribe- the costs would in that case outweigh
> non-existent benefits.
>
> Its all about maximizing transactions (business) and minimizing busyness
> (transaction costs)!
--Michael David Kull <mkull@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>