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agreement, the consensus). Or, to ask this question in a more positive light, how can groups of
people create norms, accomplish tasks, and act
together in coordinated ways, when no one
possesses the legal competence to issue enforceable commands that others (some of whom
inevitably disagree) must follow?
“Coordination without Hierarchy”
I begin to answer these questions by employing Chisholm’s (1989)
Coordination without
Hierarchy
, which articulates a theory of decentralized and informal coordination. The theory is
developed on the basis of his study of the San Francisco Bay Area public transit system, which
involves coordination between many different local and regional agencies, none of whom
possesses final decision-making authority. Though coordination and
organization are frequently
linked with hierarchy and unification, Chisholm rejects this identification.
To coordinate means to place or arrange tings in proper position relative to each
other and to the system of which they form parts – to bring into proper combined
order as parts of a whole. It means, in essence, to bring about some kind of order,
not to provide a hierarchical unified structure…I strongly dispute the reflexive
assumption that coordination is inexorably tied to centralized
arrangements such
as comprehensive plans and consolidated agencies. (Chisholm 1989, 13).
While centralized, hierarchical and unified organization is
one
approach to resolving problems of
coordination they are not the same thing as coordination. On the one hand, centralized
organizations are sometimes inadequate to resolve coordination problems. “Where formal
organizational arrangements are absent, insufficient, or inappropriate for providing the requisite
coordination, informal adaptations develop to satisfy the need” (
ibid
. 17). On the other hand,
sometimes coordination is possible in the absence of centralized
organization, as both Ostrom
and Chisholm demonstrate. Essentially, he theoretically separates coordination from
centralization and elaborates the necessary conditions for coordination, whether the tasks of
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coordination are carried out by centralized, hierarchical bodies or decentralized and non-
hierarchical actors.
Any process of coordination involves four elements: 1) a plan of action must be
developed; 2) the plan of action must be communicated to the
parties who will carry it out; 3) the
plan as developed and communicated must be accepted by those parties; and 4) relevant
information must be acquired and disseminated (Chisholm 1989, 29). One way of
accomplishing these four components is through centralized authority issuing of directives,
communicating relevant information, and enforcing compliance. Indeed, this is the typical,
hierarchical model of organization and decision-making, in which
there is a definite top or
center, from which enforceable decisions flow. Those at the bottom of the pyramid or on the
periphery may be able to communicate with and even influence the central decision-maker (as,
for example, democratic elections aim to do), but these actors do not have the ability to make
decisions on their own. Further, most actors within this organization do not have easy ways of
communicating with each other and must go through prescribed channels and chains of
command.
However, hierarchical chain-of-command is not the only way of coordinating action. It is
theoretically possible that a plan of action can be developed, communicated and accepted
through
decentralized, networked communication of dispersed actors. In contrast to the way the
hierarchical model centralizes authority and decision-making power into a single unit,
decentralized “organization permits the continued existence of formally autonomous
organizations in the face of mutual interdependence” enabling multiple centers of power,
innovation, and experimentation. As such, “it can achieve other values, such as reliability,
flexibility, and representativeness, that would otherwise be precluded or substantially diminished
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under formal consolidation” (
ibid
. 17-18). A second key distinction
between hierarchical and
non-hierarchical coordination is that, in the latter context, individuals at any level of one
organization can communicate with individuals at any level of another organization, rather than
following a circuitous chain-of-command mode of communication (
ibid
. 33-34).
This ability to communicate horizontally, rather than just vertically, has major
informational advantages. In particular,
it enhances the
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