A Thematic Analysis of the American Business Creed

Abstract

In this study a manual content analysis was performed on speeches made by American businessmen. The speeches were divided into four groups according to whether they were given during the period between 1900 and 1929 or during the period between 1950 and 1967, and according to whether the businessmen were corporation managers or individual entrepreneurs. The speeches were measured for the presence of two ideological themes, traditionalism and antistatism. It was hypothesized and found that: modern managers were more traditionalistic than early managers, modern entrepreneurs were more antistatist than either early entrepreneurs or managers, and that modern entrepreneurs were more antistatist than modern managers. It was also observed that modern managers were more traditionalistic than modern entrepreneurs. r he following study seeks to ascertain the social structural sources of two _ conservative ideological themes in the American business creed. The study is, thus, in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge. These two themes-which we have This content downloaded from 157.55.39.253 on Wed, 08 Jun 2016 06:32:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms