A general theory of the firm: From Knight to relationship marketing

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build an integrative framework for our understanding of the firm which would embrace all alternative theories in the field into one logical scheme. There are multiple views of the firm - microeconomic view, transactional costs view, legal view, organizational theory view, resource-based view, knowledge-based view, relationship marketing and others. The main idea of this paper is that all arguments of these approaches may be systematized and built into one integrative framework which may be called a general theory of the firm.