‘Strategy, Economic Organization, and the Knowledge Economy: The Coordination of Firms and Resources’ By Nicolai J. Foss, Oxford University Press, 2005

Abstract

1. Introduction‘‘If you can look into the seeds of time and say, which grain will grow andwhich will not, speak then to me.’’ This sentence from act 1, scene III, ofShakespeare’s celebrated tragedy Macbeth is charmingly vague about wherein time those seeds lie and what constitutes a seed, yet it simultaneouslyreveals itself to be the fertile soil for foreseeing where the future developmentsof the ‘right’ seeds may breed out into light. Because there are valuable issuesas well as timely and though provoking issues in it, Shakespeare’s venerablewisdom fits suitably as the opening phrase of this book review.The book Strategy, economic organization, and the knowledge economywritten by Nicolai Foss starts from a far-reaching and influential statement‘‘Our is a knowledge economy’’. By saying that, Foss has deliberately chosento position his book in the on-going debate on the burgeoning role ofknowledge in economics and management in the light of the rise and affir-mation of a knowledge-based economy and society.The main thrust of the book is that the rise of the knowledge economybears far-reaching implications for the nature of economic organization aswell as for firm strategy. Consequently, management and economic thinkinghave been profoundly affected by these new, and somewhat unexpected,circumstances. Although some scholars have taken some steps, Foss argues:‘What is needed is fundamental conceptual and theoretical thought on thetendencies that are placed under the heading of knowledge economy and howit impacts on economic organization and the content and sources of firmstrategies’ (p. 17).