The Evolution of Co-operation, Pairings and Networks

In this paper we develop an approach that may be helpful in analysing a variety of issues related to the evolution of corporate activity. We analyse the firm as an integrated system concerned with the management and organisation of internal and external linkages between businesses, with the emergence of co-operative behaviour as an endogenous feature of growing systems. It is argued that such a perspective can help illuminate a number of topics relating to the theory of the firm, including its boundaries and the mode of co-ordination of economic activity, particularly the choice between integration and co-operative modes of operation.