The Social Coordination Of Market Competition:Power, Organization And Network

Competitiveness is a basic characteristic of markets, and survival of the fittest is the law of economic development and social progress. From the perspective of neoclassic economics, competition has become the source of efficiency, and free competition in market can automatically achieve the optimal market results with survival of the fittest, but the market operation in reality often deviates from the perfect market orbit. The non-economic factors and social mechanisms have been formed survival of the worst. Why this phenomenon could be possible, has constitutes the core issue of this paper.This article follows the path of social constriction theory, referring to the theoretical framework of new institutionalism economic sociology, which investigates the transition process of the Shenzhen dumper trucks transportation market from "bad trader drives out good trader" to "good trader regain market" by field surveys, exploring how the market actors, in a particular institutional environment, make use of such social mechanisms as power, organization and network to coordinate the market competition issues among transportation services. Shenzhen, as the "bridgehead" of China’s reform and opening up, has created a Shenzhen miracle which attracts people’s attention throughout the world after more than thirty years’ continuous high-speed development. Dumper trucks have made remarkable contributions for urban construction as important means of transportation, However, with the saturated transportation market and intensified vicious competition, many bad trends like overspeed, overload and illegal-operated dumper motorcade gradually dominate the market, which contribute to a disorder marketplace and frequent occurrences of traffic accidents. In January2012, dumper trucks industry association acquired the official approval, meanwhile, the government carried out an all-round remediation to the disorder market. Under the government regulation and self-restraint of the industry association, a reasonable and well-organized market competition order can be achieved gradually.This article analyzes how do these three kinds of forces including government power, trade association and dumper motorcade play roles during the competition and coordination process of Shenzhen transportation market; as well as different interactions between market competitors and institutional power shape different market outcomes. Analysis demonstrates that, the nonlocal bad traders successfully use network mechanisms decouple the institutional power and soften the government power under certain institutional circumstances, that cause the transportation market for Lemons, good traders lost advantages in the competition; When good local traders establish trade association through coordination, combining government authority to regulate the market competition, which result in the failure network mechanisms of bad traders, thus reversing the market competition pattern, hence bad traders gradually lose their competitive advantages, then good traders start to regain the market again. From the perspective of relationship between market players and institutional power, coordination of market competition order is the process of market players returned from the "decoupling" relationship to obedient relationship.