ABSTRACT

One of the most important issues for business over the next decade will be that of regulation. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a great deal of discussion about the need for ‘deregulation’. Free-market liberals and their supporters argued that in many industries regulation had become a form of protection for organizations and their existing business practices. Regulation tended to create entry barriers and encourage managers and regulators to develop cooperative relations which benefited themselves rather than customers. In order to release the dynamic forces of market competition into these areas, it was argued that there needed to be deregulation. New entrants would then be able to compete more easily and new business practices would be encouraged. In this way, customers could be expected to benefit from new products, cheaper prices and better service. Deregulation was part of a wider movement to extend the range of the market and its ‘high powered incentive structure’ (in Williamson’s terms: e.g. Williamson 1994:90) into areas which had previously been managed through hierarchy and authoritative modes of coordination.