Economic sociology is a rapidly expanding field, applying sociology's core insight--that individuals behave according to scripts that are tied to social roles--to economic behavior. It places homo economicus (that tried-and-true fictive actor who is completely rational, acts only out of...

Between 1970 and 2000, Stanford University enabled and supported a vigorous interdisciplinary community of organizations training, research, and theory building. Important breakthroughs occurred in theory development, and a couple of generations of doctoral and post-doctoral students received...

The last several years has witnessed a growing interaction between economists and sociologists engaged in the study of organizations' strategies. Economists and sociologists can gain real insight from these interactions. To date, however, these interactions have been to ad hoc and unfocused to...

In 1981, W. Richard (Dick) Scott of Stanford's sociology department described a paradigmatic revolution in organizational sociology that had occurred in the preceding decade. In Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems ( Scott, 1981 ), he depicted the first wave of organizational...

Agency theorists diagnosed the economic malaise of the 1970s as the result of executive obsession with corporate stability over profitability. Management swallowed many of the pills agency theorists prescribed to increase entrepreneurialism and risk-taking; stock options, dediversification, debt...