Outside the firm, price ...

Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is co-ordinated through a series of exchange transactions on the market. Within a firm, these market transactions are eliminated and in place of the complicated market structure with exchange transactions is substituted the entrepreneur-co-ordinator, who directs production.
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 Ronald Coase

Quotes from the same author

Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: 'If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn't go around and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?' '
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 Ronald Coase
In fact, a large part of what we think of as economic activity is designed to accomplish what high transaction costs would otherwise prevent or to reduce transaction costs so that individuals can negotiate freely and we can take advantage of that diffused knowledge of which Friedrich Hayek has told us.
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 Ronald Coase
We must first note that economic factors are taken into account in a world in which ignorance, prejudice, and mental confusion, encouraged rather than dispelled by the political organization, exert a strong influence on policy making.
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 Ronald Coase
Ronnie had it right calling it Torture. That is a much more accurate description the way I see it.
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 Ronald Coase
It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?
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 Ronald Coase