Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

24 How It Worksmutual adjustments to each other. Each adapts to theother’s peculiarities and finds ways to influence the other.They may succeed in their coordination with no more thanan occasional appeal to an overseeing mother-in-law. Civilservants constantly engage in give-and-take to work outtheir coordination, as do scientists, teachers in a school,politicians, and children on a playground.Many people define coordination as the activities oraccomplishment of a coordinator, a definition that blindsthem to cooperation by mutual adjustment. They sometimesalso fall into a comparable misperception: that coordinatorsby definition coordinate. Ostensible coordinatorsdo not necessarily coordinate; they sometimes make a messof things. Legend has it that the greatest central coordinatorof them all flooded the earth to erase some creative mistakes.Many central coordinators have tried to bury theirs.The distinction between central and mutually adjustingcoordination can also be seen as the distinction betweenunilateral and multilateral control. Who exercises control—a central coordinator or many interacting participants?Both systems of coordination use the same tool kit of controls:talking things over, mutual back-scratching, payingsomeone to do as one wishes, issuing commands. (Clearlycentralists have the power to command, but so also domany of the persons engaged in mutual adjustment.) Bothsystems also make use of less attractive controls—for example,threats: “Do it or else!” The difference is the unilateral-multilateralcontrast.You can unilaterally control and thus coordinate five ofus as we work together to launch your boat. Or the six of uscan achieve a nice coordination simply through multilaterallywatching, responding to, and influencing each other.Or think of two dozen pedestrians on a city street corner