Over the past several years there has been an awareness that mar kets, contractual arrangements, and hierarchical organizations can be uti lized as alternative modes of coordinating resource utilization in the con text of the firm. In most practical situations mixed forms of organization are more frequent. That is, non-market coordination mechanisms are being utilized even in predominantly market oriented economies. The reasons for the use of one of these organizational modes over the others are still being examined extensively. Very often, asset specificity and bilateral monopoly, risk...