Introduction:

In many industries, a number of aspects of how firms conduct their business have changed substantially over the last years. Newspapers and the business press, as well as the empirical academic literature have documented a wealth of aspects that have changed substantially over the last years. Many of these changes are well known, such as increased use of information and communication technology, globalization, and massive changes in employment relations. Others are less well documented and have drawn less attention. The change that I will focus on in this article is the fact that firm boundaries have got increasingly blurred, in the sense that firm boundaries are much more differentiated than just between the options ‘in-house’ or ‘outsourced’ – at least judging by an increasing number of empirical articles. Interesting, not only has this change been noted much less than other changes such as the use of information and communication technology. Its implications are also less well understood so far, partly perhaps because it has drawn less attention. In this article, I will focus particularly on the implications for theories of economic governance.