Knowledge Intensive Economy Firms Between Participation and Exclusion
Abstract: Privatized knowledge must now be included among the most important technical assets available to a firm, and the skills of an organization’s members are likely to become highly co-specific to those assets. The extent of the knowledge owned by the firm sets limits on its possible future technological development, including the skills which are worth developing within the organization. Firms may find themselves in a virtuous circle where the ownership of intellectual assets stimulates the acquisition of the co-specific skills and, vice versa, the availability of these skills makes it possible to acquire new intellectual property rights. However, if a firm is to enjoy this virtuous circle, it must have monopoly on certain technical assets. This monopoly implies that some other firms will find themselves in a vicious circle: because of the lack of intellectual property rights, they do not find it convenient to enhance their skills, and because of the lack of the relevant skills, they are unable to acquire intellectual property. These virtuous and vicious circles can be seen as different organizational equilibria generated by different configurations of property rights and technical assets. The polarization of organizations between these different organizational equilibria may be another undesirable consequence of intellectual monopoly. The two main novelties of globalization – the integration of financial markets and the privatization of knowledge – push in the same direction. A potential world of small democratic firms can be replaced by an actual world of few hierarchical corporations.
