Markets as Dualistic, Semi-Decentralized Organizations

Jackson, William A. Article — Accepted Manuscript (Postprint) Markets as Dualistic, Semi-Decentralized Organizations Review of Evolutionary Political Economy Suggested Citation: Jackson, William A. (2024) : Markets as Dualistic, Semi-Decentralized Organizations, Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, ISSN 2662-6144, Springer Nature, Berlin, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, pp. 153-172, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43253-023-00111-z , https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43253-023-00111-z This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/305809 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, 5(1): 153-172, 2024 (Accepted author manuscript) MARKETS AS DUALISTIC, SEMI-DECENTRALIZED ORGANIZATIONS William A. Jackson Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK Email: [email protected] Abstract The theoretical ideal of a competitive market is generally assumed to separate organizing from trading, in an implicit dualism. Traders sell or buy within the market but do not organize it. This paper proposes an alternative, more realistic conceptual scheme based on duality, in which organizing and trading are distinct but intertwined. While the exchange of property rights is overseen centrally, many details of market trade are decided locally by traders. Producers and retailers may arrange the trading venue, specify the items traded, set and publish prices, provide information, and transport goods. They cultivate relationships with customers, recasting the pattern of trade and the social structures that underlie the market. Such dualistic, semi-decentralized organizing generates other dualities, including stability-change and continuity-creativity. A duality perspective can encompass the complexity of markets, as well as illustrating the numerous ways they may evolve. Keywords: markets, organization, duality, complexity, evolution JEL Codes: B52, D40, L11, L14 - 1 - 1. Introduction The organizing of markets is often neglected by economists, but has occasionally been noticed. Institutional economists have pointed out that market trade occurs within an organized institutional framework and could not exist otherwise (Lowry 1994; Rosenbaum 2000; Dolfsma, Finch and McMaster 2005; Hodgson 2008; Prasch 2008, Part I). Without property rights and rules for their voluntary transfer, any sustained exchange would be unfeasible. The need for prior organizing is acknowledged when markets are defined as ‘organized and institutionalized exchange’ (Hodgson 1988, Chapter 8, 2008; Adams and Tiesdell 2010; Jackson 2019b, Chapter 1). A market must be prepared in advance and does not appear spontaneously. Market organizing has also been addressed by economic sociologists and organization theorists, who have studied how markets arise and operate (see, for example, Lie 1997; White 2002; Swedberg 2003, Chapter 5; Fourcade 2007; Beckert 2009; Ahrne, Aspers and Brunsson 2015; Brunsson and Jutterström 2018; Brunsson 2019; Aspers, Bengtsson and Dobeson 2020). There may be no single organizer, and traders themselves may set prices, brand products, provide information and nurture relationships with other traders. Organizing and trading are mingled, so that central bodies only partially organize the market and traders fill the gaps (McMillan 2002, Chapter 1; Redmond 2010; Ahrne and Brunsson 2011; Brunsson 2019). Because organizing is spread across various agents, few labelled as organizers, it is easily overlooked. Economic and sociological literatures on market organizing differ in their emphasis. Institutional economics has followed John Commons (1924) in examining the legal foundations for market trade, though it has said less about how markets emerge and how trade is arranged. More recent economic literature has gone further, to consider the practical functioning of financial and other markets (examples are Orléan 1999, 2014; Revest and Sapio 2013, 2019). Economic sociology has stressed the local detail of how traders interact, with networking and partial organization by various agents (Baker 1984; Lie 1997; White 2002; Ahrne, Aspers and Brunsson 2015; Brunsson 2019; Aspers, - 2 - Bengtsson and Dobeson 2020). Attention is devoted chiefly to particular cases of market trading, rather than the institutional background. Some strands of economic sociology have, nonetheless, investigated the structural basis for markets, notably in field theories (Fligstein 2001; Bourdieu 2005). Along with differences of emphasis, the economic and sociological literatures are separated by disciplinary boundaries and seldom collaborate or cite each other. The current paper builds on these literatures and puts them within a novel conceptual scheme. In the theoretical ideal of perfect competition, trading should be pure and separated from organizing, to give a dualism. An alternative conception of markets, set out in following discussion, regards organizing and trading as being intertwined, tied together in a duality (Bhaskar, 1993, Chapter 2; Reed, 1997; Jackson, 1999). Markets do have formal organizing bodies, but many are not designated as such and take part in selling or buying. Real markets are best described by organizing-trading duality, which captures how traders reshape markets and how some but not all market organizing is decentralized. Portraying markets in this way can illuminate issues such as the problems of regulation, the diversity of markets, their evolution, and their apparently contradictory features. Section 2 deals with the main tasks in organizing a market and whether they are centralized. Section 3 explains the conceptual scheme of organizing-trading duality. Section 4 looks at examples in actual markets, and Section 5 considers implications for the study of markets. Section 6 makes concluding comments. 2. Organizing markets The word ‘organization’ has no agreed meaning. A widespread view, consistent with everyday usage, is that an organization is steered by agents who select its goals and - 3 - determine its internal hierarchy and procedures (Rowlinson 1997, Chapter 4; Daft 2021, Chapter 1). It has goal-directed agency and may be a legal agent in its own right. Formal, hierarchical organization has been differentiated from markets in a markets-or-hierarchies contrast, sometimes with networks as a hybrid case (Williamson 1973, 1975; Thorelli 1986; Thompson et al. 1991). Other meanings of organization are also discernible – it may refer to the process of organization, as well as to the outcome of this process. For the sake of clarity, we can distinguish three senses of organization: ‘organizing body’ refers to a formal organization with explicit goals and goal-directed agency, as with firms or governments; ‘organizing’ refers to the process of organization, which could be distributed among several organizing bodies; ‘organized result’ refers to the outcome of organizing. All three senses have relevance for markets. A market typically has several organizing bodies, some involved in trading, and the process of organization is essential to the sustenance of trade. The market itself can be seen as the organized result of these efforts. Although it does not have its own goals or goal-directed agency, it is the outcome of organizing by goal-directed bodies. The organizing bodies may have multiple goals, some geared to public service, others serving private interests, including profit if the body is commercial. By helping to organize a market, however, every organizing body must want to facilitate trade and increase its volume. While the market as an organized result has no goals, its organizing bodies have at least one shared goal in promoting trade. Beyond this, the details of organizing are variable. Aspers, Bengtsson and Dobeson (2020) argue that markets are fashioned through organization, mutual adjustment and fields. Organization comes from an overt organizing body that runs a market on behalf of others who wish to trade. The organizing is visible, as in a stock exchange, but liable to be incomplete. Mutual adjustment happens when there is no single organizing body and the market emerges from partial organization by producers or retailers (Chamberlin 1933; Robinson 1933; White 1981, 2002). Organizing is dispersed across the major participants who adjust to each other. Fields envisage a wider origin for markets, from the social context of capital accumulation, production, - 4 - power and commerce: an understanding of market organization must heed the economic and social landscape (Fligstein 2001; Bourdieu 2005; Beckert 2010; Fligstein and Calder 2015). Details of any particular market will depend primarily on organization and mutual adjustment, yet they in turn are contingent on the field. Institutions too have no agreed definition, but usually refer to rules, roles and procedures (formal or informal) as a structured setting for behaviour (Neale 1987; Hodgson 2006). Unlike an organizing body, they have no goal-directed agency and form an impersonal structure within which agency is exercised. An organizing body creates institutions through the procedures followed by its members and participants. For market exchange, the organizing bodies of the legal system implement the roles of seller and buyer, which have certain rights and responsibilities. These roles are linked, as a seller cannot sell without a buyer, and yield a social structure of interconnected roles that exist independently of the role occupants (Lawson 1997, Chapter 12; Jackson 2007; Sayer 2010, Chapter 3). Any market trader must occupy the role of seller or buyer and respect the rules of trading. Markets have both institutional structures to support trade and organizing bodies to oversee the institutions. Some of the organizing is centralized and external: it is concentrated among a few dedicated agents who do not trade and stay outside the market. The rest of the organizing is decentralized and internal, spread out across numerous agents, many of whom have entered the market as traders. Table 1 summarizes the main organizing tasks in a market. The first five cover legal foundations for market exchange. Property rights must be defined and maintained, since exchange implies agreement on transfer of property. Trading contracts require oversight, through contract law distinguishing between voluntary (legal) and involuntary (illegal) transactions. Regulation of trade will be needed and may have to be tailored specifically to areas such as medicine or finance. Standards must be defined and enforced, with penalties for misconduct. These tasks come to the fore in trade disputes and have a low profile when trading goes smoothly. They are normally centralized and external, carried out by organizing bodies that stand apart from the market. Exceptions are possible, as in the historical cases where decentralized - 5 - regulation by traders has emerged and proved workable (Greif 1992, 1993). For most trading, though, regulation has been conducted externally. Table 1 Organizing a market Main organizing tasks Performance of organizing tasks Defining and maintaining property rights Overseeing trading contracts Regulating trade Centralized Defining and enforcing standards External to the market Dealing with misconduct Arranging trading venues and dates Specifying the items traded Setting and publishing prices Decentralized Providing information Internal to the market Transporting goods The five organizing tasks in the bottom half of Table 1 cover the practicalities of how markets operate. A trading venue (physical or virtual) has to be arranged, allowing trade to go ahead at a declared place and time, and the item being traded has to be specified and known to potential traders. Market prices must be set and published as a guide to the terms of trade, and reliable information on products and prices is necessary for sound trading decisions. Goods must be transported to and from the trading venue, or between the locations of seller and buyer. These tasks are often decentralized: sellers may arrange the trading venue, differentiate and brand their products, set prices, and convey information. - 6 - Markets have various organizers. The organizing bodies of the legal system oversee the formal setting for voluntary exchange of property rights. Some markets, such as stock exchanges and auctions, have further organizing by a specialized body assigned to promote competitive trade. Other markets, such as those for manufactured goods, have implicit, piecemeal organizing by producers/sellers. Although markets require organizing, some of it may be undertaken by agents viewed as traders and not labelled as organizers. Much market organizing is dispersed, untraceable to a single external or internal agent. 3. Dualism and duality of organizing and trading Under perfect competition, participants in a market are assumed to be pure traders. The market already exists as a setting for competitive trade, without any contribution from the traders, implying dualism of organizing and trading. Dualism as a philosophical concept denotes separation of two items through a binary contrast that arouses tensions and opposition (Dow 1990; Sayer 2010, Chapter 1). Here, the conceptual scheme of dualism divides market organizers from traders. Organizers build an arena for trading, but do not trade. Traders sell or buy competitively, but do not organize the market. Tacit dualism reflects the traditional idea of a market as a location for trade. The market then has prior existence as a place where traders come together to make commercial transactions. Historically, public or other bodies have authorized and regulated markets, acting as a visible organizer. In late-medieval England, for instance, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, trading occurred in ‘market towns’ or ‘market places’ with the permission of the Crown or relevant local authorities (Postan 1972, Chapter 12; Britnell 1981; Casson and Lee 2011; Davis 2012). Interference by traders in this organizing was disallowed, so the organizers and traders were kept apart. - 7 - Perception of markets as a pre-arranged location for trade has endured in modern usage, stoking the imagery of dualism. Neoclassical economic theory, with perfect competition as its benchmark, encourages implicit dualism. The neoclassical model of a perfectly competitive market, as originally drawn up by Alfred Marshall and Léon Walras, was based on stock exchanges organized formally by specialist authorities (Aspers 2007; Ahrne, Aspers and Brunsson 2015). Competitive trade was made possible by prior organizing of the market. This has been forgotten in much subsequent economic theory, which dwells solely on rational trading behaviour. Despite the silence about organizing, it is separated from trading in neoclassical theory and implicit dualism pertains. Economic theorists often relax the perfectly competitive ideal, yet it has been embedded in the teaching of economics and bears upon how markets are apprehended. Organizers Organizing Organizing roles (property, contracts, regulation, information) (Impermeable boundary) Trading roles (selling, buying) Trading Traders Figure 1 A market with organizing-trading dualism - 14 - Kim 2011). Trading networks based on information technology interfere with anonymous competitive trade. Entry to the market may not be free and products may be fabricated on demand, removing any homogeneity. When traders go beyond their roles as sellers or buyers, the market shifts towards duality. Even if a market has been designed by economic theorists, after a blueprint for efficient competitive trading, it will normally have unintended consequences that cause it to miss the hypothetical ideal (Nik-Khah and Mirowski 2019; Rilinger 2023a). Dualism can be pursued in financial markets but still be unattainable. Actual financial markets take many forms, some decentralized with market-makers who also trade (Howells and Bain 2007; Pilbeam 2018). There may be informal, over-the-counter arrangements, organization by cooperatives of traders, or trading services provided by specialist companies. None of these variants conform to dualism: as in other markets, duality is standard. 4.3 Markets for manufactured goods Most markets for manufactured goods have no single organizer and no organizing-trading dualism. Goods are branded and advertised, prices are fixed, traders know each other, external information is scarce, and new products can be offered for sale at any time. Producers look after the local details of market organizing, on behalf of their customers but with profit as the goal. Their ability to shape the market is examined in the discipline of marketing, which addresses the process of market formation by firms (Brown 1951; Keith 1960; Hunt 1976; Cochoy 1998; Kotler, Keller and Chernev 2021). Individual firms develop and sell branded versions of the product, and the market emerges from the rivalry and mutual adjustment of the main producers. Such markets are widespread in modern developed economies, as has long been recognized in theories of imperfect or monopolistic competition and monopoly capital (Chamberlin 1933; Robinson 1933; Baran and Sweezy 1966). While no single organizing body exists, traders must obey the rules of property exchange overseen centrally through the legal system. Large producers/sellers carry out numerous organizing activities, visible though seldom perceived as organizing. The number of traders-cum-organizers is greater than one but - 15 - remains small, confined to a few big firms with market power. Since organizing overlaps with trading, there will be duality. 4.4 Retailing In some markets, a dedicated organizer may be present without playing the part of a neutral, non-trading referee. This happens, for instance, when trade is organized by specialist, profit-making retailers (Hamilton, Petrovic and Senauer 2011; Dunne, Lusch and Carver 2014, Part 2; Fernie, Fernie and Moore 2015). They mediate between producer and consumer, simplify distribution, and fulfil several functions of a market organizer: providing a trading venue, delivering products, informing buyers about the items on sale, publishing prices, and handling disputes and complaints. Often the premises of the retailer will be called a ‘market’, as with supermarkets. Retailing spawns a class of agents devoted to organizing trade, though they are not disinterested, neutral referees. On the contrary, they have a commercial interest in enlarging trade, with vast expenditure on branding, marketing and advertising, and make profit through a mark-up on prices. Successful retailers exert market power over both producers from whom they purchase and buyers to whom they sell (Dobson and Waterson 1999; Bloom and Perry 2001; Burt and Sparks 2003; Smith 2016; Geyskens 2018). They do not act as a single, unbiased organizer hoping to preserve balance between sellers and buyers. Organizing is mixed with trading and concentrated among the dominant firms. Once again, this is duality. 4.5 Online trade Recent developments in information technology have led to virtual markets, with electronic payments and no physical location. Although the need for physical organizing is reduced, the virtual trading space still has to be organized and regulated. In some cases, an effort is made to attain dualism. On an internet auction site such as eBay, the organizer aspires to be an independent, non-trading auctioneer overseeing competitive, one-off - 16 - exchanges among market participants. As with physical auctions, the competitive ideal will be hard to accomplish: information may be open to error, outcomes may be random, and the organizer may be commercially motivated with a desire to encourage sales. Traders using online markets may find their own ways of interacting that extend outside any ordering imposed by the organizer (Aspers and Darr 2022). In a multisided market, the trading platform varies in its treatment of different groups of users, bringing outcomes that are optimal in some respects but not neutral or even (Evans and Schmalensee 2008; Rysman 2009). Other kinds of online trade make no attempt to keep organizing separate from trading. Many online retailers provide the website through which trading occurs but also supply everything on offer: they are simultaneously the market organizer and exclusive seller. Competition will be limited, as it requires the buyer to search the websites of alternative sellers. Price-comparison websites can be a form of virtual market place, compiling information from online sellers, though the information is liable to be selective and subject to commercial pressures. Online trade resembles physical trade in the tendencies towards duality. 5. Implications of organizing-trading duality Duality of organizing and trading has various implications for the study of markets. As a general conceptual scheme, it is less restrictive than dualism, which is an artificial and stylized assumption propagated by economic models that embody perfect competition. Even if we admit the perfectly competitive ideal to be unrealistic, its lingering aura has framed how trading is perceived and conducted (Callon 1998; MacKenzie 2006; MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu 2007). Yet actual trading falls short of dualism, for traders influence market organization. Duality as a conceptual scheme can provide a richer, more accurate account of markets that allows them to take many forms and be organized in different ways. Organizing can derive from the interaction of several partial organizers, yielding the market as the organized result. Central, external organizing bodies will - 17 - normally be present in the legal oversight of property exchange, alongside traders-cumorganizers who compete and adjust to each other. Organizing-trading duality can be seen as having efficiency properties, as discussed in Section 3, but gives no assurance of evenness or equity. Market organizers, external and internal, share the desire to ease and increase trade. Voluntariness of trading should ensure that all participants, in their own estimation, gain from their involvement. Standard arguments about gains from trade continue to apply, subject to any caveats about misinformation and manipulation of trading behaviour. The dominant producers/sellers or retailers will, nevertheless, have a private interest in reorganizing the market for their own advantage. Their activities go beyond price fixing to cover marketing, advertising, branding and customer relations, all of which bear upon trading and mould it to boost profits. Buyers, often a myriad of uncoordinated individuals and households, can do little to resist this market power. The outcome will be biased towards the producers/sellers or retailers best able to reorganize the market. Duality can shed light on the difficulties of regulating markets. Asymmetries in market power are allegedly removable through regulation, such that the regulator is a neutral referee enlisted to break up oligopolies and preserve balance. The intervention, if successful, would attain dualism by separating organizing from trading: no market participants could reorganize trade for their private benefit. Practical efforts at regulation have a chequered history and are prone to regulatory capture, whereby the regulator colludes with dominant traders (Dal Bό 2006; Carpenter and Moss 2013). The ability of traders to reshape the market may blur the boundaries between public and private interests. Regulators may be in thrall to traders, consciously or otherwise. Deliberate support for private interests – material capture – would amount to malpractice, but biases may result from cognitive or cultural capture: regulators may have limited knowledge, rely on traders for expertise and fail to detect private interests (Rex 2020; Saltelli et al. 2022; Rilinger 2023b). These difficulties are foreseeable within a duality scheme, as the traders’ propensity to reorganize the market is treated as normal. Overturning duality in favour of dualism will prove troublesome: firms may be the local organizers of the market, keen to resist any challenge from external regulators. - 18 - Another implication of duality is for the diversity of markets and their capacity to evolve. Compared with dualism, duality has more scope for variation. It allows traders to augment the market by forging organizing and trading roles, acting as ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (Hwang and Powell 2005; Hardy and Maguire 2008). Table 2 compares the evolutionary capacity of markets with dualism and duality. A hypothetical market with organizing-trading dualism has little leeway for evolution. Organizers stay aloof from traders and remain the same, organizing roles are fixed, and the item traded is standardized. Dualism rules out subsidiary organizing roles created and occupied by traders, or subsidiary trading roles based on seller-buyer connections. The only variable is the population of traders, on the bottom row of Table 2, as they have the option of entry or exit and can withdraw from the market if unhappy with the price. This must be implicit in a static model, and the evolutionary process goes unrepresented. Under market-clearing equilibrium, the market would adapt through prices alone to reach an efficient outcome with no changes in the product traded or anything else. The market organizers, guardians of a given competitive structure, are not supposed to be agents of change. In a market with organizing-trading duality, the avenues for evolution are broader. A durable market structure is still present, so the core organizing roles of the state and the legal system provide the organized setting for trade. The top two rows of Table 2 are the same for dualism and duality. The next four rows show that duality has greater evolutionary capacity than dualism. With duality, traders perform subsidiary organizing roles that transform the market. Products are differentiated through branding, customer loyalty is sought through advertising and marketing, and sellers communicate with buyers. Both non-price competition and cooperation among traders become feasible. New roles and relationships are added as the market evolves, old ones are discarded. In response to technical changes, some firms may specialize in certain sorts of retailing and market organizing, building new competences and offering new services. All of this unfolds within the market structure, which lends the market its continuity and identity. The population of traders varies through entry or exit, as with dualism, but is no longer the only route to change. - 19 - Table 2 Evolutionary capacity of markets Organizing-trading relationship Dualism Duality Population of core organizers Constant Constant Core organizing roles Fixed Fixed Item traded Standardized Differentiated Population of subsidiary organizers/traders Zero Variable Subsidiary organizing roles None Variable Subsidiary trading roles None Variable Population of traders Variable Variable Among the advantages of organizing-trading duality is that it can appreciate the apparently contradictory properties of markets and mesh with other dualities considered in organization theory (Reed 1997; Janssens and Steyaert 1999). Prime examples relevant to markets are the dualities of stability-change and continuity-creativity. Although stability and change seem to be opposites, forming a dualism, they are in fact interdependent and form a duality (Farjoun 2010; Marsh 2010; Sutherland and Smith 2011). Organizations must adapt if they are to thrive, and those that accommodate change will be the most stable. Markets, as semi-decentralized organizations, epitomize this: the trading can be adapted and partially reorganized within a durable trading arena. Continuity and creativity may also seem opposed, but the norms and routines upheld by an organization need not stifle creativity and may succour it (Graetz and Smith 2008, 2009; Sonenshein 2016; Fortwengel, Schüssler and Sydow 2017; Sydow 2018). In a market, the open access for producers/sellers ensures that new ideas can be tried out. Such innovations have a destructive side, expressed by the Schumpeterian concept of ‘creative destruction’, itself a duality (Schumpeter 1987, Chapter 7; Metcalfe 1998). Creativity undermines former trading habits and forces turnover in market power, so it comes with destruction, but even the most dramatic changes occur inside market structures. Without - 20 - the market, the commercial promise of new products could not be tested. Markets engender continuity and creativity, neither elevated above the other. Duality of organizing and trading can be related to the complexity of markets. In academic usage, complexity refers to variety within a structured environment: a complex system maintains its identity over time, but generates multiple, unpredictable outcomes (Rosser 1999; Hodgson 2003; Elsner 2017). It is structured yet fluid, ordered yet unruly, stable yet changeable. The juxtapositions and interactions evoke dualities, hence the kinship between complexity and duality (Smith and Graetz 2006; Morçöl 2010). Markets, with their semi-decentralized organization, offer a prime example of complexity. Market trading can blend price sensitivity, role compliance, brand loyalty and relationship formation, in a composite method of organizing that defies any markets-or-hierarchies assumptions (Elsner, Hocker and Schwardt 2010). Compulsory seller and buyer roles are incomplete, other trading roles are optional, and traders have room for variation in how they trade. Producers or retailers may be early adopters of new technologies, acquiring competences that guide the organizing, practice and regulation of market trade. All the variation and adaptation occurs within a single, durable market. The upshot is complexity, in which a common market structure gives rise to diverse, evolving and unpredictable trade. 6. Conclusion A duality perspective can highlight the distinctiveness and peculiarity of markets as semi-decentralized organizations. Markets do have centralized elements, especially in the legal oversight of property exchange, but these are never quite comprehensive and have to be supplemented with further organizing by traders. Organizing is not isolated from trading, as in the hypothetical ideal of dualism, and they coexist as a duality. Sellers and buyers communicate with each other, provide information, differentiate items on sale, - 21 - set prices, create market niches, and bond with known trading partners. Much market trade turns on new organizing and trading roles, devised and performed by the traders themselves so as to shape trade within the overall market structure. The market is then the organized result of actions taken by several organizing bodies, including traders. Organization by traders, while departing from the hypothetical ideal, may have advantages: local knowledge of agents with trading experience may be vital in supporting trade, ensuring its stability and increasing its volume. These are the usual benefits called upon to explain why the organizational background to markets is important. Organizing-trading duality has other benefits: it lets markets evolve, assists product innovation, permits diversity of trade, and promotes cooperative behaviour. Competition will be channelled into non-price forms less susceptible to being volatile. The drawback is that duality fosters asymmetry between sellers and buyers. In many markets, the producers/sellers are large corporations with marketing departments that can manipulate trade. The buyers, fragmented and far greater in number, are ordinary people and households. Producers/sellers carry out the internal organizing of the market in a biased manner to bolster their market power. Curbing this power through regulation will not be straightforward, as the regulators may be pulled into the same uneven duality and fail to act as neutral arbiters. Other remedies for asymmetry would require coordination among buyers, so as to have a bigger impact on market organizing and resist the might of the producers/sellers. This too faces hurdles, given the size of multinational corporations and their huge expenditures on marketing and advertising. Semi-decentralized organization is fundamental to markets and, in the spirit of duality, its positive and negative traits are best understood as being interwoven. Sustenance of trade, with the potential for collective gains, comes with outcomes tilted towards the dominant traders-cum-organizers. Markets are intricate and adaptable to an extent that makes them ambiguous: their virtues come with blemishes. The ambiguity means that local detail remains crucial in evaluating any particular market. - 22 - Acknowledgements I am grateful to Eve Chiapello and the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and advice. 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