This book will reorient the discussion not only of business interests, but of the welfare state and social democracy, for it explains not only the rise of peak associations, but their support for welfare state measures today. Martin and Swank explain American exceptionalism as well as any book...

IN RECENT years, sociologists have returned to study the field's first subject, economic behavior. Beginning in the 1840s, Karl Marx tried to understand the economic underpinnings of class relations and political activity. Forty years later, Émile Durkheim explored how work was divided up in...

Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim sought to understand modernity by comparing precapitalist societies with capitalism. Marx explored the transition from feudalism to capitalism; Weber the capitalist impulse that arose with Protestantism; and Durkheim the rise of capitalism's division of...

Émile Durkheim's Division of Labor has palpably influenced students of organizations, occupations, and stratification. Chapter 11, by Paul Hirsch, Peer Fiss, and Amanda Hoel-Green, documents that influence by exploring his contribution to our understanding of the global division of labor. In...

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...

Why do firms do what they do? Why does one cut prices while its neighbor buys out competitors? Why does one diversify into new industries while its neighbor spins off subsidiaries to focus on its core competence? Why do some strategies rise while others fall? These are central concerns of both...