Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

5Enterprise and CorporationIn market-system coordination, everyone gets into the act.Among those coordinated there are no inactive or passivenonparticipants. Yet, as I have said, entrepreneurs and enterprises,the largest of which are corporations, are the kingpins.What are the powers of these market participants?How are they controlled? I think we can do better than suchpopular formulations as that corporations today rule theworld (they do and they don’t), that enterprises are governedby irresponsible rapacious executives (often the case but ofless significance than might first appear), that, for good orbad, corporations have displaced the market system (a wildexaggeration), or that they can be trusted to govern themselves(power corrupts).Entrepreneurs and corporations are typically the immediateor, as I shall say, the proximate decision makers onwhat cooperation is to be attempted and by what means.Proximate decisions have to be made on converting objectsand performances (like steel) into other wanted objects andperformances (like file cabinets, painted and delivered). Inthe immediate situation, people in the mass do not—andcannot—make such decisions. Entrepreneurs, who do makethem, are of course governed by their anticipations of massresponse—they cannot survive if customers do not buy.Still, the proximate decision is theirs: on what pesticidesare to be made available to farmers, say, or whether to manufacturequiet cement mixers. Look at the long chains of interactionsthat connect inputs at one end to performances