Economics,Sociology, History: Notes on Their Loss of Unity,Their Need for Re-integration and the Current Relevance of the Controversy between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller

We are experiencing a situation of increasing criticism of the state in which economics is being represented nowadays. One of the remarks is that economics has become too formalized and too abstract and that the state of discipline has become increasingly unable to express many phenomena of “real life” with its concrete socioeconomic specifica. Criticism has found a way to get cumulated in different terms of economic pluralism. The claim for fostering interdisciplinary research which we also find nowadays reflects the diagnosis that our islands of shared knowledge have become too fragmented. When reflecting what is going on in recent times a view back to the end of the nineteenth century may help to contextualize recent debate. Looking at the debate between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller which was later classified as the first battles in social sciences helps to sort up arguments which are still on the agenda, inductive versus deductive methods or empirism versus abstract theorizing.     

Not every public sector is a field: evidence from the recent overhaul of the English NHS

ABSTRACT

A structural interpretation of institutionalism has become dominant in public management research. Yet, studies tend to assume an institutional-level phenomenon without specifying how an organizational field was identified or whether structural characteristics can indeed be found in the organizational population studied. This lacuna is illustrated by exploring the structural interpretation of the field construct in the case of the recent overhaul of English primary care. Findings demonstrate the need for a more robust application of institutionalism in empirical research. Possible research problems for public management and a future research agenda based on a more relational approach to fields are discussed.     

Human resource management and performance: lessons from the Netherlands

The relationship between HRM and firm performance has been a hotly debated topic over the last decade, with the great bulk of the primary scientific research coming from the USA and, to a lesser extent, the UK. We start with an overview of this research to give a frame of reference to compare the findings from the Netherlands. By comparing the results of research in the Netherlands with those in the USA and the UK we hope to reveal the secret of achieving 'competitive advantage through people' (Pfeffer, 1994) in the Netherlands. The comparison may further allow us to supplement resource-based approaches with a more institutional perspective.     

Index Volume VIII – 1974

This article, written in the first days of the Bush Administration, is part of what will no doubt be a flood of “end of term” assessments of the Reagan era. Much of this work, naturally enough, will be concerned with evaluating the economic record of that administration and discussing the economic legacy inherited by George Bush. This article, however, is a rather different endeavor; it is an attempt by two observers from across the Atlantic to explain the triumph in the United States of supply-side ideas.     

Cultural Cooperation,Institution Building and Metropolitan Governance in Decentralizing Indonesia

The institutional turn in metropolitan governance has been influenced to a considerable degree by a rational choice approach, which views metropolitan governance as essentially created by local actors to reduce the transaction costs of inter‐jurisdictional public‐service provision. Another influential theoretical route follows a historical approach, which emphasizes the role of the state structure in producing formal institutions to enable governance at the regional level. Both approaches tend to be formalistic, simplistic and deterministic in nature, thus neglecting the dynamic interactions between the actors and their more informal, intangible, yet more basic, legitimate institutions, such as culture. This article examines the dynamic role of culture in metropolitan governance building in the context of decentralizing Indonesia. The analysis focuses on ‘best‐practice’ experiences of metropolitan cooperation in greater Yogyakarta, where three neighbouring local governments known as Kartamantul have collaboratively performed cross‐border infrastructure development to deal with the consequences of extended urbanization. We draw on sociological institutionalism to argue that building this metropolitan cooperation has its roots in the capacity of the actors to use and mobilize culture as a resource for collaborative action.     

A.S.E. events

We are experiencing a situation of increasing criticism of the state in which economics is being represented nowadays. One of the remarks is that economics has become too formalized and too abstract and that the state of discipline has become increasingly unable to express many phenomena of “real life” with its concrete socioeconomic specifica. Criticism has found a way to get cumulated in different terms of economic pluralism. The claim for fostering interdisciplinary research which we also find nowadays reflects the diagnosis that our islands of shared knowledge have become too fragmented. When reflecting what is going on in recent times a view back to the end of the nineteenth century may help to contextualize recent debate. Looking at the debate between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller which was later classified as the first battles in social sciences helps to sort up arguments which are still on the agenda, inductive versus deductive methods or empirism versus abstract theorizing.     

An Institutionalist Vision of a Good Economy

The current crisis in global capitalism and the wide-ranging problems that have been caused by the promulgation of a regime of deregulation of goods, services, and labor markets across the globe, but especially in the United States over the past thirty years, may indeed prove to be the end of the neoliberal era. Thus it is an opportune time to reconsider how the global economy could be restructured along more equitable and progressive lines. This paper will present the institutionalist vision of just such a good economy, building on the ideas of Veblen, Ayres, Commons, and Galbraith. The institutionalist vision of a good economy is productive but also non-invidious, democratic but also pragmatic, egalitarian but also efficient. The good economy must therefore be embedded in key social institutions, and be regulated appropriately to preserve the most beneficial social and cultural institutions. The good economy must, furthermore, be a full-employment economy, with jobs available to all who are capable of making productive contributions to their society and to enable those who labor to work in decent conditions. Finally, the good economy must provision all its members with the necessary means of subsistence for them to achieve their human aims.     

Institutional isomorphism and whistle-blowing intentions in public sector institutions

Over the years the new institutionalism in public sector analysis has contributed significantly to our understanding of the dynamics of public sector institutions. While it has moved research away from behavioural explanations to recognizing political and cultural contexts, the focus on public sector institutions has been minimal. This research examines, by self-report questionnaire from employees in two government organizations, how institutional mechanisms shape whistle-blowing intentions within the context of a developing country. Despite the country context, findings from this study are encouraging in that participants’ intentions to blow the whistle were found, generally, to be strong.     

A Nightmare in Introductory Economics

In a pair of 1925 lectures, John Maynard Keynes described world economic history with reference to a classification of stages developed by John R. Commons. This article examines Keynes’s two 1925 lectures in the context of Commons’s writings. It spotlights lesser-known aspects of Commons’s scholarship and helps clarify ambiguities in Keynes’s two addresses. It also identifies a key document, written by Commons, upon which Keynes relied when developing his presentations. In addition, the article explains how the work of Commons and Keynes in the 1920s has relevance for the contemporary development of evolutionary Keynesianism (which can also be called Post-Keynesian Institutionalism).