Among the most revolutionary findings of twentieth-century contract theory is that the divergence between spot contracts – discrete agreements for immediate exchanges – and the long-term, co-operative contracts now generally called relations or relational contracts may be just as great as (or even greater than) the divergence between relational contracts and organizations such as companies. Relational contracts, moreover, are often situated in larger networks, that is, multi-party arrangements. Such contracts are, in practice, generally the basis of a stable organizational arrangement. Thus, rather than a single dichotomy between the market and firm forms (see Chapter 19 and Coase’s paper of 1937 – and more generally for the firm and its embeddedness, see Chapters 20–22), hybrids and intermediate solutions become a core issue of consideration, suggesting functional neighbourhoods that depart considerably from those suggested by the traditional legal categorizations.