ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical review of how the firm is analysed in economics and economic geography. By unpacking the typical firm, it shows how diverse actors and interest groups govern firms differently in different geographical contexts. As Alfred Marshall’s characterization of the representative firm, the theory of the firm has fascinated generations of economists and other social scientists. The firm converts inputs into outputs according to its production function and market demand. The contemporary landscape of capitalist firms is characterized not by the same firms everywhere, but by a mosaic of different firms even at the time when their globalization efforts are stepping up. Influenced by a more contingent and relational interpretation of the ‘economic’, new economic geographers have drawn insights from network theories and post-structural management theory to develop alternative conceptions of the nature and organization of the firm.
