Business To Business Exchanges: A Rich Descriptive Apparatus Derived From Macneil’s and Menger’s Analyses

Abstract

The dichotomy ‘market’ or ‘hierarchy’ has exercised a dominant influence on the study of forms of governance and their operation for some time. However, in the past two decades there have been large numbers of investigations of intermediate forms of governance. Subsequently it has been recognized that the behaviour that occurs within exchanges is not determined by the forms of governance used and this points to a need to understand behaviour within a variety of exchanges. An apparatus, based on Macneil’s analysis, in conjunction with Menger’s insights into the nature of exchanges, for describing behaviour within exchanges is proposed.