社会资本:融入企业经济学分析框架的思考

社会资本作为第三种资本形式要融入企业经济学的分析框架,不仅应给出它的确切含义,还应区别它与人力资本及其组织资本之间的关系,而且更为重要的是应解决它从哪里分析、在那里运行的问题。笔者认为,企业的本质是团队生产,企业的团队生产不仅放大了对物质资本的利用,形成和累积了团队成员的个人型人力资本,而且还创造出了不能分解到个人身上的团队型人力资本。组织资本与个人型人力资本相关,社会资本则与团队型人力资本相联系。它们的相互作用共同构成了企业的团队生产方式及其效率来源。     

WHY EUROPE? A CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONALIST AND CULTURALIST ECONOMICS

Abstract Economists have recently started to discuss the roles of institutions and cultural beliefs in explaining the performance of civilizations. This paper investigates two views, ‘institutionalist economics’ and ‘culturalist economics’, with regard to the question of why Europe rose economically a few centuries ago, while other regions of the world lagged behind. These two views share a common platform raised on two pillars. First, both regard institutions/beliefs as extra‐economic – as primordial entities that ultimately stand independent of economic performance. Second, both regard economic performance as fully determined by institutions/beliefs – i.e. normative causality in the sense that institutions/beliefs determine performance. Douglass North's (2005) analysis of economic performance, for example, is based on both pillars. Concerning the primordial pillar, he attributes ‘the mystery’ of the rise of Europe to primordial beliefs, viz. ‘Christian dogma’ and English ‘individualism’. Concerning the normative pillar, he presumes that such beliefs have almost one‐to‐one correspondence with economic performance. This paper, though, maintains that the two pillars (primordial analysis and normative causality) are rather fragile: Advocates of the first pillar fail to recognize that institutions/beliefs are endogenous. Advocates of the second pillar fail to recognize that institutions/beliefs can give rise to diverse economic performances.     

Corporate Versus Individual Moral Responsibility

There is a clear tendency in contemporary political/legal thought to limit agency to individual agents, thereby denying the existence and relevance of collective moral agency in general, and corporate agency in particular. This tendency is ultimately rooted in two particular forms of individualism – methodological and fictive (abstract) – which have their source in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the dominant notion of moral agency owes a lot to Kant whose moral/legal philosophy is grounded exclusively on abstract reason and personal autonomy, to the detriment of a due recognition of the socio-historical grounds of moral social conduct.I shall argue that an adequate theory of responsibility is needed, which does not only take into account individual responsibility, but also collective and corporate responsibility, capable of taking into consideration society and its problems. Furthermore, corporations are consciously and carefully structured organisations with different levels of management and have clearly defined aims and objectives, a central feature upon which I shall be focussing in this paper.