Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

76 How It Worksated an island of authority or central planning in a marketsystemsea.Every collective enterprise obviously coordinates someof its inputs and participants by its own command, at leastmanaging most or all of its workforce. Vast national andglobal coordination through market transactions succeedsin assembling for Hindustan Motors, for example, a laborforce, equipment, and inputs of many kinds. Yet the task ofcoordination is not completed until, within the enterprise,all the inputs are further coordinated to produce an intendedoutput. This further coordination can to some degree be accomplishedby market transactions within the enterprise.Hindustan could pay workers for each output while chargingthem for use of equipment and other inputs, leaving toeach worker the decision on where and how to proceed. Butwith few exceptions, it will instead pay workers simply toaccept managerial authority—that is, to do their tasks as acoordinating management directs. As an employee mightperceive it, market coordination stops at the door of the enterprise;on the other side of the door, authoritative commandawaits. A market transaction brings an employee toand through the door; then command takes over.In any society coordination first requires large-scale coordinationto assemble workers and inputs in an enterprise,and then smaller-scale coordination within each enterprise.In market systems, market transactions largely accomplishthe first requirement; but central command broadly displacesthe market system for the second.In recent decades, highly centralized authority within theenterprise has appeared to be on a decline. At the sametime, innovative forms of mutual adjustment have been onthe rise, with decisions being made by work groups instead