 The nature of institutions, organizations, and firms is treated more extensively in sociology and economics than in philosophy. Coase (1937, 1960) pioneered the literature on firms in economics. In “The Nature of the Firm”, Coase examines the question of why firms exist at all: he argues that the function of firms is to lower transaction costs that would otherwise have to be incurred in forming contracts among individuals. Coase does not distinguish the question of the function of firms from the question of what firms are. But subsequent work engages more directly with ontological questions, including eliminativism about firms (Alchian &amp; Demsetz 1972), the “nexus of contracts” view (Jensen &amp; Meckling 1976), the “property rights” view (Grossman &amp; Hart 1986, Hart &amp; Moore 1990), and the “resource view” (Penrose 1959, Barney 1991, Conner &amp; Prahalad 1996).