Explore the vast range of titles available.

This paper examines the co-evolution of MNE activities and institutions external and internal to the firm. We develop a theoretical framework for this analysis that draws on the more recent writings of Douglass North on institutions as a response to complex forms of uncertainty associated with the rise in global economic interconnectedness, and of Richard Nelson on the co-evolution of technology and institutions. We link historical changes in the character of MNE activities to changes in the institutional environment, and highlight the scope for firm-level creativity and institutional entrepreneurship that may lead to co-evolution with the environment. We argue that the main drivers for institutional entrepreneurship are now found in the increasing autonomy of MNE subsidiaries. Thus MNE agency derives from more decentralized forms of experimentation in international corporate networks, which competencecreating nodes of new initiatives can co-evolve with local institutions. Unlike most other streams of related literature, our approach connects patterns of institutional change in wider business systems with more micro processes of variety generation and experimentation within and across individual firms. This form of co-evolutionary analysis is increasingly important to understanding the interrelationships between MNE activities and public policy.

Many social scientists still resist Darwinian insights. A possible reason for this is a fear of being associated with Social Darwinism. This article updates a 2002 search for appearances of Social Darwinism in articles and reviews on the JSTOR database. This database has since increased substantially in size, and it now includes far more publications in languages other than English. Use of the term Social Darwinism was rare before the 1940s. Talcott Parsons used it in 1932 to criticise the analytic use of the core Darwinian concepts in social science. Subsequently, and for the first time, Herbert Spencer and Willam Graham Sumner were described as Social Darwinists. This led to a major change of meaning of the term, where it was associated more, but not entirely, with free market individualism. With this reconstructed meaning, a 1944 bestselling book by Richard Hofstadter provoked an explosion of usage of the term in postwar years. The continuing use of the term is partly ideologically motivated and has served to deter consideration of Darwinian ideas in social science.

This article examines the historical developments of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise since the early 1900s in order to demonstrate its distinctive characteristics that are often overlooked or belittled by some institutional-evolutionary economists and most mainstream economists. I argue that the institutionalist theory is an evolving and emergent theory, which bears a reciprocal, evolutionary, and cumulative relationship between the business enterprise and society. The institutionalist theory is, therefore, suitable for the understanding of the real-world business enterprise as it can be modified and refined along with the evolution of capitalism. The article begins with a discussion of the present state of the institutionalist theory. The following section is devoted to the major contributions to the institutionalist theory situated in the evolution of U.S. capitalism. The penultimate section provides a critical discussion of new institutional and evolutionary approaches to the firm. The article concludes with a brief discussion as to what should be done for the further development of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise.

Several scholars anticipated Ludwig von Mises's calculation argument against socialism. The present paper summarises the contributions by the members of the German Historical School of Economics who preceded Mises and provides several examples of anticipation that have not been discussed in the literature. Furthermore, the paper explains why it is not a coincidence that members of the Historical School claimed as early as the nineteenth century that socialism was unfeasible due to calculation and knowledge problems. In their attempts to understand historically specific features of capitalism, they developed an approach to capital that involved the institutions of private property, money, the market, the enterprise, and monetary calculation. Starting from this institutional approach to capital and capitalism, it was only a small step to the question of what it means for socialist systems that those institutions are lacking.

This paper analyses Carl Menger’s account of the origin of money as an example of an “invisible-hand explanation” of social phenomena. According to a distinction made by Edna Ullmann-Margalit, invisible-hand explanations can refer to two different aspects of such phenomena. First, they can describe how the aggregation of individual actions leads to the emergence of a social phenomenon. Second, they can show that the phenomenon performs a valuable function that secures its continued existence. Menger’s account of the origin of money is particularly satisfying because it includes both kinds of invisible-hand explanations: He describes how money could have emerged from the self-interested actions of many individuals and shows the social usefulness of the money phenomenon. This distinguishes Menger’s account from theories that focus on either one kind of invisible-hand explanation. The paper discusses the example of Friedrich Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution, which focuses only on the aspect of social usefulness.

In the early twentieth century, an economic doctrine known as “non-proletarianization theory” became influential among left-wing Zionists in Russia. According to this theory, Jewish workers were unable to “proletarianize”—that is, to integrate large-scale industry; hence, Jewish territorial autonomy was required, whether in Palestine or elsewhere. This article analyzes this theory’s historical development, focusing on the works of three authors: Haim Dov Horovitz, Yakov Leshchinsky, and Ber Borochov. I claim that discussions of Jewish non-proletarianization can be considered a specific and coherent intellectual tradition in the history of economic thought. I also discuss these theories’ relation to the anti-sweatshop campaign of the Progressive Era, particularly John R. Commons’s writings on Jewish immigrants that were recently debated in this journal.

A number of writers have pointed to the similarities of early Marxist conceptions of history and the arguments and conclusions found in the New Histories of Capitalism. Less well known have been the interesting parallels with the work of the chief proponent of the term \"capitalism.\" Marx only rarely used \"capitalist\" to designate the owners of the means of production. It was Werner Sombart, the interlocutor of Max Weber within the Historical School, who did the most to promote the use of \"capitalism\" as a term and who most thoroughly theorized about its application to historical interpretation. This paper contends that the primary categories respecting the relationship of markets to war, slavery, and colonialism evident in the New Histories, and most especially in Sven Beckert's work, are to be found in Werner Sombart's writings. And yet one wonders why there has been no explicit attribution.

Editor’s Introduction Originally published in Volume 36, Number 1, Spring 1992, pages 3-6. Omicron Delta Epsilon presented Douglass North (1920-2015) with the John R. Commons award in 1992 for his contributions to the economics profession. The following year he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Fogel. The Nobel honored their work in applying economic theory and quantitative methods to the study of economic history and institutional change. As a pioneer in what has become known as cliometrics (named for the classical muse of history, Clio), Professor North’s scholarship focused on how human institutions and their organizational structures influence economic and societal outcomes. He is widely recognized as one of the founders of the New Institutional Economics school of thought. In this paper, his Commons Award lecture, Professor North describes and discusses his views on the limitations of neoclassical economics that are rooted in the assumption of instrumental rationality. His discourse on culturally influenced mental models and the limitations of our ability to process complex information presages the ongoing revolution in behavioral economics. This paper remains as timely today as it did when it first appeared in The American Economist.

This article presents theoretical and historical analysis of the intersections between social work knowledge and practice and the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism. Reviewing current epistemological debates in social work, as well as the historical dimensions those debates often take on, I argue that engagement with pragmatist thought and the intersecting histories of Progressive Era pragmatists and social reformers can effectively address persistent epistemological and practical concerns in the field of social work. I first analyze contemporary articulations of pragmatism and identify key tenets of pragmatist thought, then go on to present an examination of notable inclusions and exclusions in historical accounts of Progressive Era pragmatists and social reformers. In doing so, I consider connections to historical accounts of the social work profession, as well as the implications of these histories for contemporary pragmatist thought and practice both within and beyond the field of social work. The 1890s were lively and controversial years at Hull-House. Anarchists, Marxists, socialists, unionists, and leading social theorists congregated there. . . . Chicago pragmatism was born through their collegial contacts and intellectual exchanges. They wanted to combine scientific and objective observation with ethical and moral values to generate a just and liberated society. (Mary Jo Deegan, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–1918)