Oliver Williamson: How far can you see standing on the shoulders of giants

Oliver Williamson:look further standing on shoulders of giants/Tintin October 12, 2009, the Economic prize committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences presented to Williamson the Nobel Prize for Economics for its "　　The analysis of economic management, especially in the analysis of enterprise boundaries, has a great contribution. 3:30 A.M., still in his sleep, Williamson was woken up by his son and handed the phone to Williamson until a long time later, excited Williamson said, "I think that phone call told me I got the Nobel Prize." "Division from the Four Great economic Kings" 1932, Williamson was born in Wisconsin, the United States, superior, superior, the town is located in the United States, the largest lakes Lake Superior lake, the scenery is very pleasant.　　The hustle and bustle of America's big cities makes it difficult to cultivate real academics, but rather a lot of small cities, because they are quiet and serene, and they cultivate teenagers ' habit of thinking well. Williamson's mother, the headmaster of the town's high school, teaches Latin, French and German, and is definitely a literary and historical generalist. His father was also a teacher in the middle school, a bishop of physics, Chemistry, manual labor, and a coach of the school sports team.　　Williamson, who grew up in this kind of family atmosphere, may have been a young man with a combination of liberal thinking and a solid foundation for his ability to absorb all kinds of knowledge at Carnegie Mellon University when he received your top "eclectics" advice. In the summer of superior, every student will do some kind of manual work. During his schooling, Williamson had painted his house, laid down his plumbing for a backhoe, worked as an assistant to an auto assembler and had found a job in a lab at a local refinery.　　All this has fostered his ability to participate in and observe social life in the future. Like many young Americans, Williamson initially wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer.　　However, because of his father's guidance, in high school, although abstract but the perfect structure of science became Williamson's favorite, the transfer of interest is directly reflected in school, Williamson's science results from high school began to become better. After high school and college, Williamson entered Stanford University in 1958 to pursue his Ph. D. in Business Administration philosophy. Although Stanford's reputation was very loud, Williamson gave it up, and two years later he turned to Carnegie Mellon and earned a Ph. D. in 1963. Williamson rarely mentions the reasons for the transfer of school, but there are some details that can be discerned. At Carnegie Mellon University, Williamson graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, "The Four Kings of Economics"-Simon Herbert Simon, Coase (Ronald Coase), Sayette (Richard Cyert) and Madge (James procures). Simon and Coase won the Nobel economicHe is considered one of the most important scholars in modern times, especially in the field that Simon studied, and the depth and breadth of his studies.　　While Madge is a world-renowned management expert, Sayette is the president of Carnegie Mellon University, and is still a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Nobel economics committee, who can decide the attribution of the Nobel Prize for economics. This special academic background makes Williamson pay more attention to the various organizational problems in real economic activities, rather than to be bound by the general equilibrium theory of neo-classical economics. From Simon and Madge, Williamson actively absorbed the research results of psychology, artificial intelligence, law and management, and put system analysis into interdisciplinary research. Williamson's theory analysis unit directly inherits the concept of "transaction".　　It was based on this interdisciplinary perspective that Williamson was able to create new economic theories later on. Williamson first entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963 to become an assistant professor of economics. Two years later, he left Berkeley to teach at the University of Philadelphia and Yale University. 1988, the strong West Coast complex in California, he returned to Berkeley to teach. It was then that, as his academic contribution grew, he was considered one of the founders of the new institutional economics. Neo-institutional economics is a new school that emphasizes the importance of formal systems and some informal systems, such as social practice, and how these systems affect transaction costs. Williamson described his work as "mixing social science with abstract economic theory".　　Many of his theories have now been widely used to understand and analyze many organizational structures and institutional contracts.　　In October, the Nobel Prize in economics has not yet released the final winners ' list, and Bothie Williamson has received 10 honorary doctorates. "Before Williamson, you had market knowledge, but after Williamson, you had the knowledge of trading, such as how each department entered the trading system, what kind of trouble the different people in the deal would bring, and what risks," said Pablo Spiller, a Spiller colleague. Why so.　　"Williamson, unlike many other economists, rarely consults for businesses, and perhaps it is a manifestation of his neutrality and objectivity that, after all, consulted some companies, it is difficult to soberly analyze all aspects of the economy with a clear view of the situation." Williamson is not interested in politics, and he rarely gives plausible advice in public. Before winning the Nobel Prize, his reputation was confined to the economic circle, but he still had a huge influence on the American company.　　His students have been all over the world, and these students who have been at the top of the various companies in the American industry and consulting industry have influenced every corner of American business. The Nobel committee said that Williamson's job was to "analyse economic management, especially corporate boundaries". This short remark, realIt means that Williamson's work covers the analysis of every detail in the "Production or sales" decision, does GM decide whether to make parts for itself or to buy parts from suppliers, or whether a newspaper decides to write articles with its own people or to get manuscripts from freelancers,　　Is the subject of Williamson's research. Roger Myerson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Melson the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, recalls that he had just read Williamson's work on economic organizations before he visited Moscow in 1991, and it was those articles that gave him a better understanding of the nature of the Organization, And the systematic comparison of communism and capitalism more accurately. Melson admits that while Williamson's research does not always focus on the financial system, it is related to many of the problems of today's economic life. For example, how to understand the organization, how to monitor their behavior in order to avoid the next economic crisis. "Business theory will become more important in the future," Melson said. "To the Nobel Prize, Melson concludes:" I think the Nobel committee is giving the public a new perspective-what is important in economics? "The source of Williamson's work was the days of the 60 when he worked in the Ministry of Justice's antitrust department, and it was the experience that made him realize that experts there had little concern about the internal workings of the economy."　　In an interview, Williamson explained his work, "economists are accustomed to thinking of companies as a black box model, that is, from input to output, they rarely delve into it and see what is going on inside the enterprise." There was a general view that many economic decisions were thought to be more efficient for the market, but Williamson found that it would be better to leave these economic decisions in the business in practice. "A competitive market will work relatively well because when buyers and sellers disagree, they can change their trading partners," he said. However, when the market competition is limited, the enterprise is more suitable than the market to make a full of friction and contradictory decision-making. "Steve Tadelis, an economist who works with Williamson, cites 787 cases being developed by Boeing to explain why an enterprise can be more efficient than the market," Tadelis. Boeing initially designed, built and assembled the aircraft within the group, and outsourced many parts of the 787 airliner. But Boeing is unable to cope with the trouble of outsourcing parts due to the lack of control of the supply chain at many of its outsourced factories. At this time Boeing, neither fast and good to deal with many design changes, nor easy to adjust the various details of the deficiencies, especially complex such as the 787 aircraft such large projects, complicated technical details more prone to problems.　　As a result, Boeing recently resumed the production of parts of many airliners, with the head of the group headquarters responsible. Edling, professor of law and economics at the University of Berkeley, Aaron Ed"One of the core issues that a business has to face is to think rationally about merging with other companies, to rationally judge whether to sign a long-term contract with other companies and how to write a contract," he said. More rationally consider whether it is necessary to trade on the spot market for short-term needs.　　Williamson's job is to make this series of judgments more rational to help companies develop. Professor Edling is very convincing about Williamson's work, and he runs his own academic software publishing company, Berkeley Electronic Publishing (Berkeley Electronic Press), with Williamson's theory. Edling said: "We sell software to many universities around the world and we form joint ventures with some marketing and maintenance software companies." Faced with many setbacks and difficulties in these partnerships, Williamson early foresaw what might happen and gave the solution. Finally, we bought a stake in the joint venture, as it was the most sensible and effective decision, just like what Williamson put forward.　　"Williamson's academic work is driven primarily by two important ideas-a treaty agreement that is never perfect, there are always many things that cannot be considered, and the other is that people in the grey areas of the treaty always prefer opportunistic practices to ensure that they can make the most of themselves, which poses a big problem. One problem has been exposed in the midst of the economic crisis, says Hinds of the Wharton School: "Many credit market contracts have not been taken into account when many loans are not repaid, and market participants haggle over the entire market on contract contracts." "Williamson's most important book is market and rank (CMC and hierarchies), and this book tries to explain the question--do we organize a business that is hierarchical or flat?" Williamson concludes that "no perfect answer can solve every situation", but his theory still explains how to measure changes.　　The book is also used to build a business from within, allowing you to easily transform from a flat-style management structure to a multi-tiered management structure. Williamson himself commented on the book and said, "That book is not a cookbook to do." The book is more focused on microscopic analysis. You have to use the experience of your work to refine the really important details. "Williamson's work has also been used in the fields of law, public policy, regulation and other microeconomics," he said. Scott Masten, a former Williamson research assistant and professor of economics and public Policy at the University of Michigan, said: "The core of Williamson's theory of economic organization is the emphasis on individual opportunism, and the Masterson of people's ability to make information more perfect." "When asked how he sees the current economic crisis, WilliamsonStressing the importance of regulation in the public and private spheres, "an organization should have economic guidance and organizational steering committees, and committees interact with one another." Both sellers and buyers should respect each other. As a recent master of the Nobel Prize in Economics at Berkeley, Williamson is considered to be a very traditional scholar who is approachable, not sparing his time and ideas, and is good at communicating with others.　　Of course, as an economics tutor, Williamson encouraged anyone to think about the economy, which, in his view, was not unattainable and everyone could be shun. A journalist asked Mr Williamson whether he thought large companies such as Citigroup and AIG would be too big to manage them. "It is possible that there are many systemic risks that may not be noticed," Williamson said. I'm not sure my method can find out those risks, but I'm building you can try to look for it. The reporter asked again: "Should they go bankrupt?" Williamson replied: "That should be possible, but we should study more rather than express our opinions." "In the eyes of Williamson's high school classmates, he was a fisherman, a bowler, a traveling traveler around the world, and, of course, a" real friend ". He got the Nobel Prize and the whole class congratulated him.　　His comments were "clean", "have a Good Wife", "Bookworm", and "servile". At the age of 77, Williamson retreated from the forefront of education, but he still worked with many graduate students. Williamson likes to play tennis, and his serve is like the famous tennis player Andy Roddick. Of course, anyone who has played tennis with him knows that Williamson's best tennis is not serving, not power, not speed, but the mind. He can keep each person's details of tennis in mind, and then evaluate his opponent's response to each ball on the pitch, and win the game without the technical strength.　　He is the real "data analysis stream" tennis ace. "He is one of the most scholarly people among our colleagues, and he likes to use scientific analogies to integrate the knowledge of various disciplines into the study," said Williamson, the dean of the Haas Business School in Berkeley. He is a good man, everything is clever. "This September 24, the University of California, Berkeley, more than 5000 teachers and students marched to protest the California government budget cuts, which made California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger face no light." But Schwarzenegger congratulated Berkeley's Mr Williamson, reiterating his commitment to improving education, but also to balance the budget.　　Mr Williamson responded by saying he would be happy to help Governor Schwarzenegger, "to help him find a way to make the situation smarter now." "Professor Williamson has made a huge contribution to the corporate boundary," Gerard Roland, director of the economics department at Berkeley University, said. No one has studied more than he did in those areas. He pushed business partnership research into the economyFrontiers in the field of learning. Edley Christopher Edley, dean of the University of Berkeley's Law school, said: "I was surprised when my student Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm not surprised that Williamson won the prize and he did really great." ”