N. Gregory Mankiw quote: “Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by a…”

“When a firm chooses to allocate its most valuable resources away from clients and to young stars, the economic consequences are real and visible.”

Jay W. Lorsch (1932) American organizational theorist

Lorsch & Thomas J. Tierney (2002), Aligning stars, p. 73

“The effects of subunit power on organizational decision making and the bases of subunit power are examined in a large midwestern state university. It is hypothesized that subunits acquire power to the extent that they provide resources critical to the organization and that power affects resource allocations within organizations in so far as the resource is critical to the subunits and scarce within the organization. Departmental power is found to be most highly correlated with the department's ability to obtain outside grants and contracts, with national prestige and the relative size of the graduate program following closely in importance. Power is used most in the allocation of graduate university fellowships, the most critical and scarce resource, and is unrelated to the allocation of summer faculty fellowships, the least critical and scarce resource.”

Gerald R. Salancik (1943–1996) American organizational theorist

Gerald R. Salancik, and Jeffrey Pfeffer. "The bases and use of power in organizational decision making: The case of a university." Administrative Science Quarterly (1974): 453-473; p. 454; Abstract.

“The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization—to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization.”

Harold Demsetz (1930–2019) American economist

Source: Production, information costs, and economic organization. 1972, p. 777, Lead paragraph

“The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization—to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Source: Production, information costs, and economic organization. 1972, p. 777, Lead paragraph

“There are many other organizations beside the government and the firm. But all of them, whether political party or revolutionary movement, university or church, share the common characteristics of the need for collective action and the allocation of resources through nonmarket methods.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 1, Rationality: Individual And Social, p. 26

“The First Welfare Theorem holds only if all consumers and firms are price takers. If some individuals or firms are price makers (they have the power to affect prices), then the allocation of resources will generally be inefficient.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 3, Tools of Normative Analysis, p. 44

“Zamanism is about creating power and private resources for all in society by destroying bureaucratic and monopolistic control on society.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9676409-zamanism-is-about-creating-power-and-private-resources-for-all

“Our fifth premise is that the resource allocation task of top management has received too much attention when compared to the task of resource leverage.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Source: Competing for the Future, 1996, p. 174

“Any possibility for improving the effective utilization of the intellectual power of society’s problem solvers warrants the most serious consideration. This is because man’s problem-solving capability represents possibly the most important resource possessed by a society. The other contenders for first importance are all critically dependent for their development and use upon this resource.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Source: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/138

“According to a frequently cited definition, economics is the study of “best use of scarce resources.” The definition is incomplete. “Second best” use of resources, and outright wasteful uses, have equal claim to attention. They are the other side of the coin.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 239: Lead sentence

“Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by an all-powerful dictator but through the combined actions of millions of households and firms.”

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