Abstract
This paper deals with the new competitiveness standards that are being set in contemporary capitalism by more cooperative environment among economic agents. It is argued that economic efficiency can be traced to contemporary forms of cooperation at grass root levels of the social organization of production, pushing the arena of competition upwards. Even more efficient performances of flexible automation technologies seem to presuppose intra-firm and inter-firm cooperative environments, radically departing from previous conflictive relation standards of modern capitalism. So much so that one of the pillars of orthodox economics, namely the theory of the firm, have been undergoing profound modifications to cope with these new facts of contemporary economic life.
Keywords:
Cooperation; efficiency; firm theory