Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

144 What To Make of ItAs for motivating energy in each of the tasks to whichpeople are allocated, the strength of market incentives isnoteworthy yet less conclusive. Market interactions holdopen a variety of opportunities for movement rather thanthe few that may be prescribed in the table of organizationof a centrally planned system. Millions of people consequentlythrow their best energies into the roles they play,believing that to be the most effective way to move up to abetter role. In simplest logic, if you want a better job, do thisone well. I say that this is not conclusive evidence of the efficacyof market incentives because there are also manymillions of wage earners whose prospects of better jobs areso slim as to fail to motivate them in their existing jobs.The authoritative, even authoritarian, management ofthe workplace is often inimical to employee motivation onthe job. I think that we do not know how much inefficiencyon the job is implied in employee indifference, frequenthostility to management, fatigue, and despair. Quite possiblythe inefficiency is enormous. Yet in the absence of themarket system, enterprises would presumably also be authoritativelymanaged, even more so than in market systems.Authority would be extended to the management ofinteractions among enterprises and between enterprisesand their suppliers and customers, interactions otherwisecoordinated through markets. And employees could notsimply leave, as they often do in a market system, ratherthan bear impositions from management. Indeed, one wayto reduce managerial authority and its questionable incentiveswithin the enterprise is to introduce internal marketswithin each enterprise.Folklore has produced some vulnerable doctrines on incentives.For example, it is an article of faith in some circlesthat the strict rule of quid pro quo best motivates worker