> "To summarize, our work is aimed at furthering the understanding of the structure and functioning of prominent social arrangements such as markets, firms, money and banking systems, science communities, and governments. The approach we have taken is to conceive of these arrangements as systems of social interaction, to characterize the modes of interaction between the members in each different arrangement, and to seek to understand how these interactions could support the emergence of the system’s capability of adapting to its environment. The various social systems considered vary greatly in the incentives offered to their

members, in the constraints imposed on those individuals, in the opportunities for the exercise of entrepreneurship, and in the aspects of the environment to which the system as a whole is sensitive. But we think it has proven possible – and useful – to see them all as specific instances of a more general structure (a “Hayekian system”) in which the capability for adaptation is generated through the operation of a functionally closed set of processes of interaction. Understanding the general structure of these social systems has allowed us some insight into what is crucial for their continued operation and how they are likely to react to environmental effects (which include effects emanating from other social systems) which affect, and sometimes impede, their internal processes."