Agafonow's article locates the role of social enterprises in devolving value through output maximizing behavior. This short paper embeds Agafonow's argument in the societal and institutional context by building upon Luhmann's social systems theory. According to Luhmann, the functional system of...

Building on the transaction cost theory of the for-profit firm, the article argues that the transaction cost-economizing role of the nonprofit firm has two distinct dimensions. One of them consists of reducing the cost of searching for, processing, and communicating information and the other...

Social capital is defined as the shared knowledge, trust, and culture, embodied in the structural forms of networks and other stable inter-agent relationships. Social capital has been shown to be more difficult to build than economic capital, and to have greater beneficial effects for community...

This article explores the cross-fertilization potential that exists between the economic theory of agricultural cooperatives and that of nonprofit organizations. A number of central ideas in the agricultural cooperative theory are shown to generate two novel insights pertaining to the nonprofit...

Vor welchen Herausforderungen steht das Projekt der Bioökonomie, wenn man aus einer ordonomischen Perspektive auf das Phänomen eines demokratischen Diskursversagens blickt? Zwei Arten des Diskursversagens sind zu unterscheiden: (a) der Fehl-Alarm und (b) der Fehlende Alarm. Gerade im Hinblick...

Drawing inspiration from American institutionalism and new institutional economics, this paper discusses the rise of large corporate farms as the transition from the classic capitalist firm to the corporate form of organization based on the separation of ownership and control. Three case studies...

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries have been faced with numerous development challenges in agriculture, especially those related to water use. Well-intentioned foreign donors and development agencies have stepped in to support local farmers, research...

Sustainability of nonprofit organizations is a key concern for today's nonprofit scholars and practitioners. Building upon the nonprofit economics literature, the present paper introduces the distinction between the demand-side and supply-side determinants of nonprofit sustainability and makes...