Re:In the Future, Employees Won’t Exist
by ChuckMcM on Sunday June 14, 2015 @12:07PM
(#9715359)
Oh I really would have liked to have talked to Coase, on your reference I tracked down his paper on the nature of the firm [1] and thought it was excellent. His point is a bit more nuanced than why firms exist but more why is it that markets can self organize and firms do not.
The interesting thing is that historically it seems that part of the reason was all the non-firm stuff that was needed. So doing payroll, providing benefits, managing coverage when people went on vacation, but those things arose in a large part because of labor unions. So as labor union's influence has declined, so has the value of the "package" provided by a firm to the employee, and the value equation of contractor or employee can more easily swing back over to contractor.
That is just such an awesomly interesting thing to think about. Thanks for the reference.
The interesting thing is that historically it seems that part of the reason was all the non-firm stuff that was needed. So doing payroll, providing benefits, managing coverage when people went on vacation, but those things arose in a large part because of labor unions. So as labor union's influence has declined, so has the value of the "package" provided by a firm to the employee, and the value equation of contractor or employee can more easily swing back over to contractor.
That is just such an awesomly interesting thing to think about. Thanks for the reference.
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937....