business schools

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 08:49 AM 5/11/98 -0700, Tom Condit wrote:
>The old institutional economics didn't just "die out". In many cases, econ
>departments in state institutions were purged at the urging of conservative
>politicians who thought Thorstein Veblen was some sort of commie because he
>didn't believe that unalloyed greed was the only purpose of human society.
>At the University of Texas, for instance, every single institutionalist was
>removed. Many of them then got jobs in the business school at [University of
>Kansas City? I'm not sure of my memory here.].
>

I think more was at stake than dislike of Veblen.  Institutionalism has the
nasty slant of (i) looking into actual motives of human actors behind
institutional edifices, and (ii) seeing those motives through the lenses of
social norms and values.  Those nasty tendencies set institutionalism on a
head-on collision courses with the official hagiographies that portray
upper echelons of the business class as nothing less than efficiency
maximizers.

Institutionalism is tantamount to a royal historian describing how the
royal family won the throne and by what hook and crook it maintais its
hegemony, instead of reproducing the received wisdom that monarchy is a
god-given, benevolent institution without which social order would collapse
in an instant.  No self-respecting court can tolerate such heresies.

Regards,

Wojtek Sokolowski