This book offers a vision of the economy as a system of structured information flow. The structuring is effected by institutions, and in particular by firms, which specialize in processing the information needed to allocate resources properly. Firms are the institutional embodiment of the visions of individual entrepreneurs who believe that they have found a better way of allocating resources. This vision has evolved over the last fifteen years, during which the author has researched a variety of topics connected with the theory of the firm - entrepreneurship, business culture, multinational enterprise, joint ventures and the like. In each of these areas he has identified the ways in which the orthodox theory of the firm needs to be modified in order to make it work properly. This book represents a major intellectual synthesis of that work.