Innovation in a Labor-Managed Firm: A Membership Perspective
基于Vanek的理论，论证劳动管理型企业在促进小规模创新方面具有优势，因其决策结构和剩余索取权能激励工人分享信息并适应创新带来的负面影响。
IN his treatise on on the general theory of the labor-managed economy, Vanek [10] argues that the organizational principle of labor-management has an advantage over other forms in promoting minor innovation. Minor innovation can be distinguished from major innovation according to capitalfinancing characteristics. Major innovation corresponds to research and development ventures which require long-term financing. Minor innovation involves using the Hayekian time and place specific information of the worker to improve productivity. Implementation occurs in a learning-by-doing atmosphere and externalities among workers are likely, but no long-term financing is required. Vanek argues that a labor-managed organization provides a conflict-free environment within which Hayek's man-on-the-spot is willing to share his information with fellow workers to improve overall performance. Vanek states that a natural channel of communication exists between those who have the information and innovative ideas and those who choose production techniques to implement this choice because of the participatory decision-making structure in the labor-managed firm. Furthermore, he claims that goal congruence exists between those with the information and those who incorporate the fruits of innovation into the distribution scheme of the firm because of each member's property right to residual earnings in -the labor-managed firm. Vanek concludes that the labor-managed firm is better able to elicit the information necessary to undertake the minor technical innovation and to accommodate and adjust to any negative effects of implementing such innovation by cushioning adverse employment effects. Vanek considers explicitly the reaction of the labor-managed firm to only one type of technical innovation, Hicks' neutral technological change. He argues that the dividend-maximizing firm faces countervailing employment reactions to such innovation. The scale effects tend to increase employment while a capital-cost sharing effect, familiar to the dividend-maximizing firm