Meaning

Why do firms exist? Strangely, no-one appears to have asked this question until a 27 year-old economist did so in 1937. Ronald Coase published his answer in The Nature of the Firm, now considered a seminal text. He studied the circumstances that led entrepreneurs to hire people as employees instead of simply contracting jobs out to traders and came up with the answer we now simply refer to as transaction costs. People are hired when the various associated costs are lower than they would be otherwise. ...

Four things struck me in 2009. They are part of a bigger picture that means that public relations practice is about to undergo another change that will be as great this coming decade as it experienced during the last decade… 1. Web 2.0 participation I dislike the 90:9:1 ratio of passives:occasionals:enthusiasts with respect to the “write” part of readwriteweb. In other words, 90% of people online don’t contribute anything, they remain passive consumers. 9% contibute content and interact now and then, and 1% are passionate bloggers, video makers, photo takers, wiki updaters etc. ...