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Geoffrey Hodgson would like to change all this with his Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure, and Darwinism in American Institutionalism (2004). Hodgson writes as both an economic theorist and an historian of economic thought, and he argues that in the history of Institutional Economics in America resides a valuable legacy upon which contemporary theorists can build. In truth, Hodgson’s book must be read together with his recent How Economics Forgot History; The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science (2001), where he has argued for the importance of historical reasoning to economists.

This essay charts an intellectual journey. Geoffrey M. Hodgson became an institutional economist in the 1980s. He explains how he discovered institutional economics and what strains of institutional thought were attractive for him. Another issue raised in this essay is how institutional researchers organize and move forward. Hodgson argues for an interdisciplinary approach, but this is not without its problems.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test the theory that new industry entrants hold advantages over incumbents in the shift from unidirectional to multi-directional revenue streams.

Using a Cobb-Douglas production function, modified to isolate returns to innovation, the authors examine data from three separate contexts: steamships on Western US rivers (1810-1860), satellite-based internet services (1962-2010) and food waste recycling (1995-2015).

The results reveal that while incumbents often attempt to stretch existing technologies to fit emerging circumstances, entrepreneurial innovators achieve greater success by approaching multi-directional value creation as a distinct challenge, one requiring new technologies, organizational forms and business models. Existing theories have primarily attributed incumb ent inertia to a firm’s inability perceive and pursue radical innovations, the results also suggest that existing firms are unwilling to pursue innovations that are likely to erode the marginal profitability of their respective business models. Ironically, rather than protecting incumbents’ financial interests, the authors find that “marginal reasoning” can lead to diminished performance and even extinction.

The proposed framework and empirical findings have implications for numerous multi-directional frontiers, including: social networking, commercial space travel, distance education and medical treatments using nanoscale technologies.

While incumbents often lament the destabilizing effects of multi-directionality, new and small firms enjoy a compelling array of entry points and opportunities.

Scholars, incumbent firms and start-ups both benefit from insights stemming from the novel formulation of multi-directionality challenges and opportunities.

This paper aims to explore the development of the accountability ideals and practices of Quaker industrialists during the period 1840–1914.

The research employs a case study approach and draws on the extensive archives of Quaker industrialists in the Richardson family networks, British Parliamentary Papers and the Religious Society of Friends together with relevant contemporary and current literature.

Friends shed their position as Enemies of the State and obtained status and accountabilities undifferentiated from those of non-Quakers. The reciprocal influences of an increasingly complex business environment and radical changes in religious beliefs and practices combined to shift accountabilities from the Quaker Meeting House to newly established legal accountability mechanisms. Static Quaker organisation structures and accountability processes were ineffective in a rapidly changing world. Decision-making was susceptible to the domination of the large Richardson family networks in the Newcastle Meeting House. This research found no evidence of Quaker corporate social accountability through action in the Richardson family networks and it questions the validity of this concept. The motivations underlying Quakers’ personal philanthropy and social activism were multiple and complex, extending far beyond accountabilities driven by religious belief.

This research has originality and value as a study of continuity and change in Quaker accountability regimes during a period that encompassed fundamental changes in Quakerism and its orthopraxy, and their business, social and political environments.

This chapter gives in “Introduction to the Human Capital Issue” a critical analysis of the standard (economic) Human Capital (HC) theory, with the help of some “traditional” (founding) accounting concepts. From this study, to avoid the accounting and social issues highlighted in “Introduction to the Human Capital Issue,” we present, in “The “Triple Depreciation Line” Model and the Human Capital,” the “Triple Depreciation Line” (TDL) accounting model, developed by Rambaud & Richard (2015b), and we apply it to “HC,” but viewed as genuine accounting capital – a matter of concern – that firms have to protect and maintain.

From a critical review of literature on HC theory, from the origin of this concept to its connection with sustainable development, this chapter provides a conceptual discussion on this notion and on the differences/common points between capital and assets in accounting and economics. Then, it uses a normative accounting model (TDL), initially introduced to extend, in a consistent way, financial accounting to extra-financial issues.

This analysis shows at first that the standard (economic) HC theory is based on a (deliberate) confusion between assets and capital, in line with a standard economic perspective on capital. Therefore, this particular viewpoint implies: an accounting issue for reporting HC, because “traditional” accounting capital and assets are clearly isolated concepts; and a societal issue, because this confusion leads to the idea that HC does not mean that human beings are “capital” (i.e., essential), or have to be maintained, even protected, for themselves. It only means that human beings are mere productive means. The application of the TDL model to an accounting redefinition of HC allows a discussion about some key issues involved in the notion of HC, including the difference between the standard and “accounting” narratives on HC. Finally, this chapter presents some important consequences of this accounting model for HC: the disappearance of the concept of wage and the possibility of reporting repeated (or continuous) use of HC directly in the balance sheet.

This chapter contributes to the literature on HC and in general on capital and assets, by stressing in particular some confusions and misunderstandings in these concepts. It fosters a cross-disciplinary approach of these issues, through economic, accounting, and sustainability viewpoints. This analysis also participates in the development of the TDL model and the research project associated. It finally proposes another perspective, more sustainable, on HC and HC reporting.

The stakes of HC are important in today’s economics, accounting, and sustainable development. The different conceptualizations of HC, and the narratives behind it, may have deep social and corporate implications. In this context, this analysis provides a conceptual, and practicable, framework to develop a more sustainable concept of HC and to enhance working conditions, internal business relations, integrated reporting. As an outcome of these ideas, this chapter also questions the standard corporate governance models.

This chapter gives an original perspective on HC, and in general on the concept of capital, combining an economic and an accounting analysis. It also develops a new way to report HC, using an innovative integrated accounting model, the TDL model.