Authors:
  • 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.

    "The nature of the firm" by Ronald Coase in Economica, Volume 4, No. 16 (p. 388), onlinelibrary.wiley.com. November 1937.