FirmNet: the scope of firms and the allocation of task in a knowledge-based economy

A prevalent claim is that we are in a knowledge economy. An increasingly influential argument is that the division of labour is becoming complex and firms can be viewed as networks of knowledge nodes, that is, sets of interacting individuals with key skills and competencies. Firms’ competitive advantage relies in their ability to enact intellectual production processes that require bridging talents and integrate individual stocks of knowledge within an organisation. Building intra-organisational networks of skills, however, may request the enactment of social processes these latter being difficult to manipulate by the means of hierarchical control. The issue, then, becomes one of understanding the mechanisms that, within an organisation, may substitute hierarchical control in order to promote coordination among individuals bearing specific skills and facilitate knowledge integration processes. By the means of simulation experiments, we investigate how different hypotheses regarding individual decision-making explain emerging coordination within organisational contexts.