The social structures of markets and the internal organisation of firms are best viewed as attempts to mitigate the effects of competition with other… - Neil Fligstein

In this book Neil Fligstein takes issue with prevailing theories of the corporation and proposes a radically new view that has important implications for American competitiveness.

Organizational and not financial or ownership embeddedness is likely to be a more important cause of actions of firms than anything else in the case of United States. This means efforts should concentrate on specifying models of relations between firms that focus on intra- and interorganizational processes, such as the construction of strategic action and the cultural frames by which such a construction makes sense.

The leaders of the large firms dominated by the manufacturing conception saw the key problem as low prices. This meant that they were intent on controlling prices by cutting production. But once prices were stabilized, they were cautious about increasing production for fear that prices would again collapse. Since their competitors had roughly equal production capacities and costs, all would lose by too rapid an increase in production.