Social Institutional Theory Research Articles

A Catholic Theory of Corporate Law

Over the past century, the Catholic Church has developed a powerful philosophical and theological theory of social institutions, including economic institutions. In particular, the Church has addressed a number of issues concerning the modern corporation, especially in areas of special concern such as just wages for workers, working conditions, social responsibility of corporations, etc. There is a discernable “gap,” however, in the Church’s social doctrine when it comes to the question of why corporations are formed at all, and why the law that governs them is designed the way it is. This paper proposes a theory to fill that gap—viz., an entrepreneurship-based theory of the corporation which is consistent with Catholic social doctrine and modern corporate law. Several approaches dominate American corporate law scholarship. The first, derived from the application of neoclassical economics, stresses shareholder primacy—shareholders are the owners of a corporation, and thus the goal of the corporation as an institution is the maximization of shareholder wealth. Scholars working in this tradition stress the perceived problems created by the separation of ownership from control in the modern corporation. Because the agent/directors of a corporation, and not the owner/shareholders, largely control the corporation, agency problems are created by the resultant misalignment of incentives. For such scholars, the primary goal of corporate law is to ameliorate the agency problem inherent in corporations in order to achieve the goal of increasing shareholder wealth. The second major approach is the “stakeholder” model of the corporation. Proponents of the stakeholder model envision the corporation as an amalgam of various “stakeholders,” each of whom has an interest in the corporation through their contribution to it. Shareholders contribute capital, managers contribute their business skills, communities provide a place for the business to conduct its activities (and sometimes tax breaks and other incentives), employees contribute their labor, etc. Through these contributions, stakeholders gain a right to influence the direction of the corporation which the law ought to recognize.

Democratization in Armenia: Some Trends of Political Culture and Behavior

Abstract: Historically, Armenian society was organized by strong communities established around the Armenian Apostolic Church, which helped these communities survive throughout the centuries despite the lack of a central authority. Community relationships are still very essential, especially during political processes such as elections. Community ties, combined with democratic ideas, have fostered some democratic practices, but the former Soviet republics still have a long way to go before they can be described as liberal democracies. Elections play an important role in a free society. However, in some Newly Independent States' societies, they are seen as a hindrance. Some Newly Independent States espouse their own kind of democracy, which, they proclaim, serves as a bridge between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East (Kazakhstan). In the case of Armenia, it is a Christian island on the border of Europe and the Muslim world. Key words: community, democracy, Newly Independent States ********** Armenia was one of the Socialist republics within the former Soviet Union, covering an area of approximately 11,500 square miles. During the process of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Armenia was one of the first countries to witness a national movement and fight for and declare independence in 1991, before the formal declaration of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although still formally a Soviet country, building democracy and a wholesale transforming of Armenian society became necessities. According to the theory of social institutions, the elements of social structure of any society are tightly interlinked, and changes in one institution lead to changes in others. In the case of Armenia, changing or reforming the political institution necessarily would stimulate some innovations and changes in others, such as the economical system, education, family structure and functions, and the role of religion. This was a new process. Even if some of the leadership responsible for the transformation had a theoretical notion of democracy and democratic transformation, such knowledge was not sufficient to successfully implement a program of transformation and make it work. Experience is still being accumulated in Armenia, as well as in other post-Soviet republics, but it is difficult to use the term democracy to describe the political system in Armenia. Historically, Armenian society was organized in strong communities established around the Armenian Apostolic Church, which helped the nation survive through centuries of statelessness. For long periods of their history, Armenians lived under the domination of various empires. Starting early in the common era, and especially during the period that followed Armenia's adoption of Christianity as a state religion in the early fourth century, Armenia came under the influence of or was conquered by the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Mongols, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and Russians. In 1920, after two years of independence, the Russian sector, or Eastern Armenia, became a part of the Soviet Union until 1991. Community ties organized around the churches were the most important connections to preserve Armenian identity through those centuries, while many of their powerful neighbors of the time no longer exist as separate nations and states. The concept of community and related issues are discussed often, especially in contemporary literature, and has many connotations. The term could refer to small rural areas, where everybody knows each other, as well as large metropolitan districts. We define community as a group of people who share a common territory, are involved in everyday personal interactions, and invest an emotional dimension in their relations. Such community ties are shown in such interpersonal relations as friendships and cognizance of neighborhood and relatives. A community is usually small enough to produce a sense of commonality, which is defined by natural closeness of living places and the everyday activities of its members, by their day-to-day personal relationships, and by sharing some lifestyle. …

Saving the Strong Programme? A critique of David Bloor’s recent work

This article critically appraises David Bloor’s recent attempts to refute criticisms levelled at the Strong Programme’s social constructionist approach to scientific knowledge. Bloor has tried to argue, contrary to some critics, that the Strong Programme is not idealist in character, and it does not involve a challenge to the credibility of scientific knowledge. I argue that Bloor’s attempt to deflect the charge of idealism, which calls on the self-referential theory of social institutions, is partially successful. However, I suggest that although the Strong Programme should not be accused of ‘strong idealism’, it is still vulnerable to the criticism that it entails a form of ‘weak idealism’. The article moves on to argue that, contrary to Bloor, constructionist approaches do challenge the credibility of the scientific knowledge that they analyse. I conclude the article by arguing that sociological analyses of scientific knowledge can be conducted without the weak idealism and the credibility-challenging assumptions of the Strong Programme approach.

A Cost-benefit Theory of Social Institutions

This paper presents a new theory of institutions. It develops a novel answer to the theoretical question of why social institutions emerge. The theory is general and applies to all forms of incorporation, including religious organizations, business corporations, partnerships, professional guilds, marriage, non-profit organizations, political parties, local governments, and even the State. This paper characterizes the social contract by liquidation immunity: in entering the social institution, individuals surrender their right and power to terminate the existence of the social endeavor upon their individual choice. The analysis associates the emergence of social institutions with uncertainty: individuals are willing to surrender their initial termination rights when they face substantial difficulties in predicting the future. Furthermore, the level of uncertainty determines the level of coercion within the institution: the more uncertainty the members face, the more stringent the institution they are willing to form. Phenomena such as dictatorships or terrorism are the direct outcomes of increased levels of uncertainty. Finally, the analysis presents several operative conclusions. Mainly, it presents a new framework for analyzing the mechanisms of minority protection within the organization.

Institutional Networks for Inclusive Coastal Management in Trinidad and Tobago

The authors consider the role of institutional networks in integrated and inclusive coastal-zone management in Trinidad and Tobago. Drawing on theories of social institutions, a framework for understanding the institutional prerequisites for participatory management is developed. In this framework, distinction is made between institutions at the community, formal-organisational, and national regulatory levels and the means by which institutions adapt to and learn about new issues in terms of networks of dependence and exchange are characterised. The immediate networks between actors (their spaces of dependence) are augmented by wider networks between institutions at various scales (their spaces of exchange). This framework is applied to a case study of resource management in Trinidad and Tobago. Semistructured interviews with key government urban and economic planners, fisheries regulators, and other agents in Trinidad and Tobago, and a participatory workshop for resource managers, are used to identify the perceived opportunities and constraints relating to integrated and inclusive resource management within the social institutions. The findings are analysed through an exploration of the spaces of dependence and exchange that exist in the various social networks at the different institutional scales. The prescriptive relevance of this approach is in the demonstration of the nature of change required in social institutions at all scales to facilitate integrated and inclusive resource management.

Do firms plan?

The late F. A. Hayek is remembered for the argument that the decentralized price system has enormous advantages over planned systems in the critical areas of information transmission and the use of knowledge. In many minds, the recent fall of the Soviet-style economies in Eastern Europe has decisively made that case. But not all are persuaded. The model of central planning that originally impressed Lenin—the modern business corporation—remains in many minds a formidable piece of empirical evidence in favor of the possibility and desirability of centralized administrative control. This paper argues that Hayek's theory of spontaneous order can in fact include the case of such apparently purposive and extramarket forms as the business firm. It picks up a number of suggestions in Hayek's evolutionary theory of social institutions and uses them to draw a picture of the firm that is somewhat different from what one finds on the easel of neoclassical transaction-cost analysis. In the Hayekian picture, firms and markets are both systems of rules of conduct. And both are systems for economizing on knowledge in the face of economic change, albeit quite different kinds of knowledge and change. In the end, the firm is not a model for political planning for one very simple reason: the firm does not plan.

Paul Tillich on the Institutions of Capitalism

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the institutional and social aspects of the philosophy of Paul Tillich, especially with respect to his critique of the capitalist economic system. Tillich was one of the foremost theologians of the twentieth century, and while his primary emphasis was theoretical, he, throughout his life, recognized the necessity of action and assumed an activist position on most issues. Tillich's analysis of the capitalist system is cast in a mold of a theory of social institutions. Tillich was born in 1886 in a part of Germany that now belongs to Poland, the oldest son of a Lutheran pastor (Pauck, 1976, pp. 1-2). He studied at the University of Berlin, received the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Breslau, and received the Licentiate of Theology from the University of Halle. He was ordained as a minister and served as a Chaplain in the army during World War I. After the war, he became a professor at the University of Berlin. His first public lecture, in 1919, on his own thought was titled On the Idea of a Theology of Culture (Pauck, 1976, pp. 287-88). In 1920 Tillich joined a group, never exceeding ten or twelve in number, called the kairos group, which met to discuss economic and political problems, especially in post-war Germany, which this group saw as having the opportunity for creating new structures of economic organization and governance. Adolf Lowe was a member of the group, and from their first meeting in 1920 Tillich and Lowe remained lifelong friends. Lowe was dismissed from his academic post in 1933 after the Nazi takeover, moving first to England and the University of Manchester and then to the United States and the New School for Social Research, where he remained for the rest of his career (Pauck, 1976, pp. 71-72). Eduard Heimann, a professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, was also a member of the group. Heimann, a Jew, emigrated to the United States in 1933 and joined the faculty at the New School (Pauck, 1976, p. 72). Tillich, Lowe, and Heimann remained friends and stayed in close contact until Tillich's death. His close association with these two social economists influenced Tillich's application of his religious and philosophical theories into the field of economics. In 1929 Tillich accepted a position as Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Frankfort, where Adolf Lowe and Karl Mannheim were members of the economics faculty. The University of Frankfort provided a liberal atmosphere where professors visited each other's seminars and entered into discussions and debates with each other. Tillich worked closely with psychologists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and scientists. It was during his time at the University of Frankfort that Tillich became well-known in Germany (Pauck, 1976, pp. 114-19). In early 1933, shortly after the appointment of Hitler as chancellor, the Nazis occupied the University of Frankfort with the purpose of arresting all Marxists and Jews. In April, 1933, lists of the names of professors who were considered enemies of the state were published. Enemies were divided into two categories: first, left-wing intellectuals and the politically suspect and, second, Jews or the racially suspect. Tillich's name appeared on the first list, as did Adolf Lowe's, despite the fact that Lowe was Jewish. Lowe had fled Germany in March, fearing imprisonment (Pauck, 1976, pp. 129-31). Tillich was offered a professorship at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he arrived in late 1933. Tillich remained at Union Theological Seminary as a professor until 1955 when he resigned to become University Professor at Harvard University. He was named Professor of Theology in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 1962. Shortly before his death in Chicago in 1965, he accepted a position at the New School for Social Research in New York. Tillich had been invited to the New School by his old friends Lowe and Heimann. …

Menger and Hayek on Institutions: Continuity and Discontinuity

Recent scholarship has noted differences and even discrepancies among the members of the so-called Austrian school. It has been possible to identify discontinuities between generations (Hayek 1968), along methodological lines (Caldwell 1988, Hutchison 1981), among the various threads of the “Austrian revival” (Vaughn 1990), and between heterogeneous intellectual systems (Dufourt and Garrouste 1993). Brian Loasby (1989) has remarked that Friedrich Hayek was one of the few scholars to develop one of Carl Menger's outstanding contributions to economics, his theory of social institutions (Langlois 1989). The purpose of this paper is to appraise the continuities and discontinuities between the two authors' conceptions of institutions. In what follows, I shall present successively Menger's and Hayek's conceptions of institutions, and then I shall compare them.

Editors' introduction to ?Modern Psychology?

Hans H. Gerth (1908-1978) published this essay in Germany in 1936. Writing under the conditions of Fascist persecution, Gerth succeeded in bringing off a left liberal critique of various psychologies, some of which were espoused by the Nazis themselves. Jousting with unknown Nazi censors, Gerth seems to have organized his essay in such a manner that the censors would not recognize it as a critique of some of the psychological underpinnings of official ideology. This is especially the case of his treatment of Kretschmer's somatic psychology in the presentation of which he offers pictures that may be read as a sendup of both Kretsehmer's psychology and the Nazi icons. However, the essay has a lasting value as an analysis and critique of modern psychologies. As Gerth points out, the United States became the locus of behavioristic psychology, a perspective that spread into some branches of sociology as well. It is our opinion that Gerth's critique of this branch of modern psychology is more trenchant today than it was when written. Moreover, Gerth's nuanced analysis of psychoanalytic theory provides an antidote to the school of psychohistory that has reasserted itself in recent decades. Readers who are familiar with Gerth's perspective will recognize how this work adumbrates the discussion of psychology in Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions. The latter study, co-authored with C. Wright Mills, may now be read in a new light. Character and Social Structure is not only a seminal discussion of the theory of social institutions but also a critique of authoritarian practice. Arthur J. Vidich Stanford M. Lyman

Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions

Policy and Institutionalism: Selected Essays. Clifton, New Jersey: Kelley. . 1932. Institution. Pp. 84-9 in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 8, edited by Edwin R. A. Seligman. New York: Macmillan. Hankins, Frank Hamilton. 1928. An Introduction to the Study of Society. New York: Macmillan. Hobhouse, L. T. [1906] 1915. Morals in Evolution, 3rd edition. New York: Holt. . [1924] 1966. Social Development. London: Allen and Unwin. MacIver, R. M. [1917] 1928. Community: A Study, 3rd edition. London: Macmillan. . [1931] 1936. Society: Its Structure and Changes. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Parsons, Talcott. 1934. Some Reflections on 'The Nature of Significance of Economics.' Quarterly Journal of Economics 48:511-45. . 1935a. Place of Ultimate Values in International Journal of Ethics 45:282-316. . 1935b. Sociological Elements in Economic Thought. I. Quarterly Journal of Economics 49:414-53. _ . 1935c. Sociological Elements in Economic Thought. II. Quarterly Journal of Economics 49:645-67. . 1970. On Building Social Systems Theory: A Personal History. Daedalus 99:826-8 1. . 1977. Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory. New York: Free Press. . Talcott Parsons Papers. Harvard University Archives. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sumner, William Graham. [1906] 1979. Folkways and Mores, edited by Edward Sagarin. New York: Schocken. Thnnies, Ferdinand. 1931. Einffihrung in die Soziologie. Stuttgart: Enke. Wiese, Leopold von. 1932. Systematic Sociology, adapted and abridged by Howard Becker. New York: Wiley. Veblen, Thorstein. [1899] 1979. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. _ . 1914. The Instinct of Workmanship. New York: Macmillan.

Commentary: Social Institutions and Social Theory

two directions, of which the first is the lack of structural integration. The polar antithesis here is a state where individual norms have only random relations to each other where no normative system exists. It is easy to see that this implies the complete negation of institutional control. In the other direction the deviation is in terms of the breakdown of moral authority and its replacement by interest as a motive of conformity finally loss of control even by that means. In both cases the extreme polar antithesis to perfect integration will turn out to be Hobbes' state of nature, or Durkheim's anomie (they come down to the same thing) which, while it might well constitute an order in the functional, natural-science sense, is the complete negation of order in the normative, social, institutional sense. Naturally all concrete societies will fall somewhere between these two poles. Finally, beyond this analysis, the theory of institutions must be concerned with the dynamics of institutional change. The above considerations enable us to distinguish two fundamental sets of problems those connected with changes in the degree of effective enforcement, and those connected with structural change. The latter especially will be concerned with the processes by which existing value-systems change and new elements come in. This is the most formidable and difficult task of all, and hardly more than very highly tentative experimentation can be attempted by anyone considering the limitations of the current state of the literature of the subject. Before we get very far in developing a theory of change, it is necessary to know what it is that changes the principal task of this paper has been to supply that gap. It does not constitute a theory of social institutions rather some of the necessary prolegomena to such a theory.

The idea of rationality and its relationship to social science: Comments on popper's philosophy of the social sciences

Popper has proposed a ‘theory of situational rationality’ as a basis for the social sciences. This theory of rational action is reconstructed and its methodological and substantial implications discussed. It is shown that methodologically Popper's idea of rational action leads to a version of theoretical instrumentalism which is incompatible with his general philosophy of science, and that substantially it implies an unacceptable theory of social institutions. Instrumentalism can be avoided by a more contentful theory of human action encompassing ‘non‐rational’ or ‘irrational’ kinds of action; Popper's theory of institutions might be improved through a more comprehensive theory of collective action.

The Economic Theory of Social Institutions.

Journal Article The Economic Theory of Social Institutions Get access The Economic Theory of Social Institutions. By Andrew Schotter. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xiii + 177. £15.00.) James R. Slater James R. Slater University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 92, Issue 367, 1 September 1982, Pages 714–715, https://doi.org/10.2307/2232564 Published: 01 September 1982

Sneed on Rawls's theory of social institutions: Some comments

I am the last person to defend John Rawls's ethical theory.1 Indeed, I have tried to show that his theory is entirely unacceptable both on moral and on logical grounds primarily because it is based on the maximin principle, which is a highly irrational and morally highly objectionable decision rule [see Harsanyi, 1975]. But I want to express my disagreement with Professor Sneed's recent criticism of Rawls's theory [Sneed, 1976]. In particular, I want to express my very strong disagreement with his contention that social institutions have no moral force, and do not create any moral obligation in us to obey the institutional rules produced by these institutions. I also want to point out some technical mistakes in Sneed's statements about game theory.

Comments on the Theory of Organizations

This is an attempt to sketch in very rough form what seem to me some of the central concepts and problems of organization theory. In the first section I have tried to define the field of organization theory and to indicate with some care what justification there is for regarding it as a distinct area of theory, related to, but by no means identical with, the theory of small groups and the theory of social institutions. The comments in the second section on subject-matter areas simply spell out the implications, many of them perhaps obvious, of the central argument of the first section.This paper is concerned with all kinds of organizations, and not simply with those that fall within the area of public administration. This definition of the scope of organization theory reflects my own conviction that there are a great many things that can be said about organizations in general, without specification of the particular kind of organization under consideration. Moreover, even if we were interested solely in governmental organizations, I believe that a great deal can be learned from the comparison of their characteristics with those of other kinds of organizations, and from attempts to explain the similarities and differences that are found. Neither of these statements denies the existence of numerous and important phenomena that are peculiar to governmental organizations or the need for theory in public administration to deal with these phenomena.

The American Revolution in the Political Theory of Lord Acton

LORD ACTON once complained that he ~agreed with no one and no one Li agreed with him. This should serve as a counsel of caution to his present-day interpreters. In the flush of rediscovering Acton, it is temnpting to fit him into a familiar pattern of thought, one, preferably, which is relevant to contemporary controversies. And since he is eminently quotable, the temptation is all the greater to use him for partisan purposes, to select suitable quotations to recommend a cause. It is unfortunate that Acton himself should get lost in the process, that a part should be mistaken for the whole, and that he should be hastily assigned to a ready-made philosophy or school. Recently his name has been appearing, casually but with increasing regularity, in the roll of sponsors of an economic and political liberalism which traces its genesis to Adam Smith and the Manchester school. He was welcomed into their ranks by Friedrich A. Hayek, one of the most distinguished leaders of the party. In a lecture delivered late in 1945 at University College, Dublin, and published as Individualism: and false,' Hayek took as his exemplars Alexis de Tocqueville and Acton, heirs to the tradition of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and the English Whigs. He introduced them as the true exposing the errors of those who traced their descent to the Physiocrats and Encyclopedists, and, above all, to Rousseau. The false individualists act upon a theory of social institutions. They assume that liberty is the product of a conscious social design, the application of a single, consistent, and rational idea. Elsewhere Hayek has described this attitude as the engineering mania applied to society: the engineering mind seeks to blueprint the organization of society, plan each of its details, assign to each individual and each action a definite place in a rational scheme for the improvement of the general welfare. The individualists, on the other hand, according to Hayek, are not driven by the rationalist compulsion to design and plan. They are sensitive to the complexity and indirection characterizing society. They realize that it is not in the

Social Anthropology at Oxford: Mr. E. E. Evans-Pritchard

Mr. E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD, who has been appointed to succeed Prof. Radcliffe-Brown, studied anthropology and late Prof. C. G. Seligman at the London School of Economics and is well known for his researches among the peoples of the Anglo-Reptian Sudan carried out during 1926–36. The results of these studies have been published in a number of papers in Sudan Notes and Records and other scientific journals, and in two notable books, “Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande”(1937) and “The Nuer”(1940). The scientific value of these works lies in the penetrating analysis applied to carefully observed facts. Mr. Evans-Pritchard was for a time professor of sociology at the Egyptian University, Cairo. He left Egypt to take up the position of research lecturer in African sociology in the University of Oxford. With Dr. Fortes he edited and contributed to a book on “African Political Systems”(see Nature, August 10, 1940). In 1939, Mr. Evans-Pritchard joined the Army and served in the Abyssinian campaign and later in Syria and in Cyrenaica. In the last-named country he was in close contact with the Senussi, on whom he has written several papers. On his return from the Army he was appointed reader in anthropology in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge now loses and Oxford regains one of the most brilliant of the exponents of what may be called the.newer social anthropology, in which theories of social institutions are tested and developed by experimental observations in the field.