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  • March 2013
  • Article
  • Theory and Society

From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America

By: Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential—if largely invisible and poorly understood—role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (c. 1900–1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of "scientific" approaches to decision making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing "Chicago-style" economic approaches—offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm—that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo-liberal regime.

Keywords

Professions; Disciplines; Neo-Liberalism; Education; Economics; Finance; Society; United States

Citation

Fourcade, Marion, and Rakesh Khurana. "From Social Control to Financial Economics: The Linked Ecologies of Economics and Business in Twentieth Century America." Theory and Society 42, no. 2 (March 2013): 121–159.
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About The Author

Rakesh Khurana

Organizational Behavior
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More from the Authors
  • Philanthropic Conditions for Diffusion: Theoretically Mediating the Diffusion of Economics and How it Superseded the Rise of Executive Education in Business Schools By: Kenneth C. Kimura, Rakesh Khurana and Marion Fourcade
  • How Foundations Think: The Ford Foundation as a Dominating Institution in the Field of American Business Schools By: Rakesh Khurana, Kenneth C. Kimura and Marion Fourcade
  • Still Leading Series—Issues in Transitioning to New Forms of Service Later in Life By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Rakesh Khurana, James Honan and Ai-Ling Jamila Malone
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