Information, coordination and contractual relations in firms

Abstract

The types of contract studied here correspond to a formalization of commitments between actors with interdependent activities, in a context of uncertainty and incomplete information. Based on research on economic mechanisms set up to control coordination between actors in industrial design, we highlight conflict between coordination grounded in a “strictly” contractual approach, on the one hand, and “flexible” types of commitment which take advantage of an increase in information but may have high coordination costs, on the other. The aim of this paper is to highlight the existence of a dual viewpoint in internal contractualization approaches. Based on this idea, we examine first the impact, on the robustness of contracts, of the allocation of residual rights on interface knowledge and, second, the advantages of a dynamic contract requiring explicit commitment (according to usual transactional criteria) and flexibility (in order to favour mutual access rights to additional competencies).