Production theory and the theory of cost both belong to the central areas of business administration, for all considerations concerning the economic organization of industrial manufacturing processes start from these. Two developments in the past 30 years have had a considerable influence on the structure and the concentration on points of emphasis in this book. I am referring to findings from KOOPMANS' activity analysis and to the formulation by GUTENBERG of a production function concept that focuses on industrial production processes. Activity analysis has made it possible to develop, from a uniform approach, different types of production functions which describe the concrete principles of production in the productive sector of a business enterprise; this has created a common basis for all production concepts in business administration. The Gutenberg Production Function with its different kinds of adjustment to a changing output has opened up a flexibility to theoretical and practical considerations that gave rise to a large number of additional studies in this area. Considerations in cost theory were in particular need of considerable extensions in the direction of cost minimal combined adjustment processes. By means of the organization of its contents, this book will take both approaches into due account. In that way, it is vastly different from other books dealing with the same subject. As a matter of course, traditional analytical methods and ways of thinking also constitute a large part of the book.

1: Introductory Survey of the Production Field

I. Integration of Production into Business Administration
II. Basic Conditions and Tasks of Entrepreneurial Activity
III. Delimitation of the Research Subject
IV. Object of the Theory of Production and Cost
V. Different Fields of Production Planning
VI. Production and Management Planning
VII. Summarizing Survey
One Production Theory
2: Fundamentals of Production Theory
3: Substitutional Production Functions
4: Limitational Production Functions
5: Some Further Approaches in the Field of Static-Deterministic Production Functions
6: Dynamic and Stochastic Extensions in the Field of Production Functions
7: Empirical Validity of Production Functions
Two Cost Theory
8: Fundamentals of a Cost Theory and Minimal Cost Combination
9: Cost Functions on the Basis of Special Production Functions
10: Combined Processes of Adjustment for Several Functionally Identical Aggregates
References
Name Index.