Coordination emerges from partisan actors adjusting to one another without any central coordinator, and often beats deliberate coordination.
Distinct from muddling through, which describes single decisions. This describes system-level coordination without a coordinator, and Lindblom argued it usually beats the deliberate kind.
In practice
- Four suppliers, two regulators and a trade body produce a workable standard without any of them coordinating, and no one could have designed it.
- A city's food supply is coordinated by nobody and works better than the periods when someone tried.
- Standing
- Distinct from muddling through, Lindblom's account of how single decisions are made.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Why organisations learn, harden and decline