Organisations and Interests

Much of traditional economic theory is predicated on the proposition that scarce social resources are normally allocated by the price mechanism and that the inner workings of organisational structures are of little relevance to the student of production, consumption and distribution. The traditional economist tends therefore to formulate his arguments in terms of market exchanges, while leaving to the social psychologist and the sociologist of bureaucratic behaviour the study of the institutional black box: his concern being with individuals making choices, he reasons, there is simply no need for him to look in any detail at the manner in which obedient servants and faceless automatons passively administer endowments which are not their own. The good steward has no personal impact on the decisions made, the goals adopted: his role is exclusively to execute the commands passed down to him that originate with his employer. The bad steward does have a personal impact on the direction taken by the whole (much as a runaway horse can influence the itinerary of a coach journey) but only until his employer learns of the commands that were not executed and opts to execute the bad steward in their place. Either way, the traditional economist concludes, there is no need for him to treat internal organisation as if it were a significant mode of resource allocation in its own right: stewards do as they are told or discover the true meaning of the Visible Boot.1