Social reality, the boundaries of self-fulfilling prophecy, and economics

Organization Science

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 654-668

  Felin, Teppo ^a   Foss, Nicolai J ^b,c  

^a BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of International Economics and Management   (Denmark)

^c NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (Norway)

Author keywords

Organization theory and social reality; Organizational economics; Philosophy of social science

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650235646     PISSN: 10477039     EISSN: 15265455     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1287/orsc.1090.0431     Document Type: Article

References (164)

1. Adler, P. S. 2001. Knowledge, trust and the future of capitalism. Organ. Sci. 12 214-234.
2. Adler, P. S. 2002. Corporate scandals: It's time for reflection in busi- ness schools. Acad. Management Executive 16 148-149.
3. Adler, P. S., C. Heckscher 2006. The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the Knowledge Economy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
4. Adler, P. S., J. Jermier. 2005. Developing a field with more soul: Standpoint theory and public policy research for management scholars. Acad. Management J. 48 941-944.
5. Astley, W. G. 1985. Administrative science as socially constructed truth. Admin. Sci. Quart. 30 497-513.
6. Astley, W. G., R. F. Zammutto. 1992. Organization science, managers, and language games. Organ. Sci. 3 443-460.
7. Banerjee, A. V. 1992. A simple model of herd behavior. Quart. J. Econom. 107 797-818.
8. Barley, S. R., G. Kunda. 1992. Design and devotion: The ebb and flow of rational and normative ideologies of control in managerial discourse. Admin. Sci. Quart. 37 1-30.
9. Barnard, C. 1938. The Function of the Executive. Harvard University Press, Boston.
10. Barnes, B., D. Bloor. 1982. Relativism, rationalism and the sociology of knowledge. M. Hollis, S. Lukes, eds. Rationality and Relativism. MIT Press, Cambridge, 21-47.
11. Berlin, B., P. Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. University of California, Berkeley.
12. Binmore, K. 2006a. Economic man-Or straw man. A commentary on Henrich et al. Behavioral Brain Sci. 28 817-818.
13. Binmore, K. 2006b. Why do people cooperate? Politics, Philos. Econom. 5 81-96.
14. Birch, D. L. 1987. Job Creation in America: How Our Smallest Companies Put the Most People to Work. Free Press, New York.
15. Black, F., M. Scholes. 1973. The pricing of options and corporate liabilities. J. Political. Econom. 81 637-654.
16. Bloor, D. 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago University Press, Chicago.
17. Boas, F. 1911. The Mind of Primitive Man. MacMillan, New York.
18. Boghossian, P. 2006. Fear of Knowledge. Oxford University Press
19. Bonjour, L. 1998. In Defense of Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press, London.
20. Boudon, R. 1998. Social mechanisms without black boxes. P. Hedstrom, R. Swedberg, eds. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Oxford University Press, 173-203.
21. Boudon, R. 2003. Limitations of rational choice theory. Amer. J. Sociol. 104 817-828.
22. Bourdieu, P. 1992. Invitation to a Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
23. Brandts, J., T. Saijo, A. Schram. 2004. How universal is behavior? A four country comparison of spite and cooperation in voluntary contribution mechanisms. Public Choice 119 381-424.
24. Bresnahan, T., E. Brynjolfsson, L. Hitt. 2002. Information technology, workplace organization, and the demand for skilled labor: Firm-level evidence. Quart. J. Econom. 117 339-76.
25. Bricmont, J., A. Sokal. 2004. Defense of a modest scientific realism. M. Carrier, J. Roggenhofer, G. Kuppe, P. Blanchard, eds. Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars. Springer-Verlag, Hamburg, Germany, 17-45.
26. Brown, D. E. 1991. Human Universals. McGraw-Hill, New York.
27. Brown, J. R. 1994. Smoke and Mirrors: How Science Reflects Reality. Routledge, New York.
28. Brown, J. R. 2001. The Science Wars: An Opinionated Guide. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
29. Brynjolfsson, E., T. Malone, V. Gurbaxani, A. Kambil. 1994. Does information technology lead to smaller firms. Management Sci. 40 1628-1644.
30. Cable, D. M., T. A. Judge. 1994. Pay preference and job search deci- sions: A person-organization fit perspective. Personnel Psych. 47 317-348.
31. Cable, D. M., T. A. Judge. 1996. Person-organization fit, job-choice decisions, and organizational entry. Organ. Behav. Human Dec. Processes 67 294-311.
32. Callon, M. 1998. Introduction: The embeddedness of economic markets in economics. M. Callon, ed. The Laws of the Market. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1-50.
33. Callon, M. 2007. What does it mean to say that economics is perfor- mative? D. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa, L. Siu, eds. Do Economists Make Markets: On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
34. Cannella, A. A., R. L. Paetzold. 1994. Pfeffer's barriers to the advance of organizational science: A rejoinder. Acad. Management Rev. 19 331-341.
35. Cappelli, P. 1999. The New Deal at Work. Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
36. Casson, M. 1996. Economics and anthropology: Reluctant partners. Human Relations 49 1151-1180.
37. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. Moutin, The Hague, The Netherlands.
38. Chomsky, N. 2003. Cartesian Linguistics: The History of Rationalist Thought. Cybereditions, New York.
39. Clark, G. 2007. Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
40. Davis-Blake, A., J. Pfeffer. 1989. Just a mirage: The search for dispositional effects in organizational research. Acad. Management Rev. 14 385-400.
41. Dumont, L. 1977. From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
42. Durkheim, E. 1962. The Rules of the Sociological Method. Free Press, Glencoe, IL.
43. Dweck, C. S., E. L. Leggett. 1988. A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psych. Rev. 95 256-273.
44. Eccles, R. G., N. Nohria. 1992. Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management. Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
45. Elster, J. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
46. Fehr, E., S. Gaechter. 2000. Fairness and retaliation: The economics of reciprocity. J. Econom. Perspectives 14 159-181.
47. Felin, T., N. J. Foss. 2005. Strategic organization: A field in search of micro-foundations. Strategic Organ. 3 442-455.
48. Felin, T., W. S. Hesterly. 2007. The knowledge-based view, nested heterogeneity, and new value creation: Philosophical considerations on the locus of knowledge. Acad. Management Rev. 32 195-218.
49. Ferraro, F., J. Pfeffer, R. I. Sutton. 2005. Economics language and assumptions: How theories can become self-fulfilling. Acad. Management Rev. 30 8-24.
50. Festinger, L., A. Pepitone, T. Newcomb. 1952. Some consequences of de-individuation in a group. J. Abnormal Soc. Psych. 47 382-389.
51. Foss, N. J. 2003. Selective intervention in internal hybrids: Inter- preting and learning from the rise and decline of the Oticon spaghetti organization. Organ. Sci. 14 331-349.
52. Fourcade, M. 2007a. Theories of markets and theories of society. Amer. Behav. Sci. 50 1015-1034.
53. Fourcade, M. 2007b. The construction of a global profession: The transnationalization of economics. Amer. J. Sociol. 112 145-194.
54. Fourcade, M. 2009. Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
55. Frank, R. H. 1988. Passion Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. Norton, New York.
56. Freeman, D. 1999. The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A His- torical Analysis of Her Samoan Research. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
57. Freese, J., J. C. A. Li, L. D. Wade. 2003. The potential relevance's of biology to social inquiry. Annual Rev. Sociol. 29 233-256.
58. Frey, B. S., M. Osterloh. 2005. Yes, managers should be paid like bureaucrats. J. Management Inquiry 14 96-111.
59. Friedman, M. 1953. Essays in Positive Economics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
60. Frydman, R., E. Phelps. 1983. Individual Forecasting and Aggregate Outcomes. Cambridge University Press, New York.
61. Funder, D. C. 1987. Errors and mistakes: Evaluating the accuracy of social judgment. Psych. Bull. 101 75-90.
62. Funder, D. C. 1995. On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psych. Rev. 102 652-670.
63. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, New York.
64. Gerhart, B., G. T. Milkovich. 1990. Organizational differences in managerial compensation and financial performance. Acad. Management. J. 33 663-691.
65. Ghoshal, S. 2003. Business schools share the blame for Enron. Financial Times (July 17).
66. Ghoshal, S. 2005. Bad management theories are destroying good management practices. Acad. Management Learn. Ed. 4 75-91.
67. Ghoshal, S., P. M. Moran. 1996. Bad for practice: A critique of the transaction cost theory. Acad. Management Rev. 21 13-47.
68. Gibbons, R. 1998. Incentives in organizations. J. Econom. Perspectives 12 115-132.
69. Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
70. Gigerenzer, G., P. M. Todd, the ABC Research Group. 1999. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
71. Gilovich, T. 1991. How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. The Free Press, New York.
72. Gintis, H., R. Khurana. 2007. Corporate honesty and business education: A behavioral model. Working paper, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA.
73. Goldman, A. I. 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
74. Green, S. E. 2004. A rhetorical theory of diffusion. Acad. Management Rev. 29 653-669.
75. Greenwood, R., L. Empson. 2003. The professional partnership: Relic or exemplary form of governance. Organ. Stud. 24 909-933.
76. Grunberg, E. 1986. Predictability and reflexivity. Amer. J. Econom. Sociol. 45 475-488.
77. Haack, S. 1998. Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
78. Harris, J., P. Bromiley. 2007. Incentives to cheat: The influence of executive compensation and firm performance on financial misrepresentation. Organ. Sci. 18 350-367.
79. Hayek, F. A. 1945. The use of knowledge in society. Amer. Econom. Rev. 35 519-530.
80. Heider, E. R., D. C. Olivier. 1972. The structure of the color space for naming and memory in two languages. Cognitive Psych. 3 337-354.
81. Henshel, R. L. 1982. The boundary of the self-fulfilling prophecy and the dilemma of social prediction. British J. Sociol. 33 511-528.
82. Jensen, M. C., W. Meckling. 1998. The nature of man. M. C. Jensen, ed. Foundations of Organizational Strategy. Harvard University Press, Boston.
83. Jussim, L. 1986. The self-fulfilling prophecies-A theoretical and integrative approach. Psych. Rev. 93 429-445.
84. Jussim, L. 1989. Teacher expectations: Self-fulfilling prophecies, perceptual biases, and accuracy. J. Personality Social Psych. 57 469-480.
85. Jussim, L. 1991. Social-perception and social-reality: A reflection construction-model. Psych. Rev. 98 54-73.
86. Jussim, L., K. D. Harber. 2005. Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: Knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality Soc. Psych. Rev. 9 131-155.
87. Kahneman, D., A. Tversky. 1996. On the reality of cognitive illusions. Psych. Rev. 103 582-591.
88. Kay, A. C., L. Ross. 2003. Nonconscious influence and conscious reflection: The interplay of implicit cues and explicit situational construals in the Prisoner's dilemma. J. Experiment. Soc. Psych. 39 634-643.
89. Kay, P. 1999. Color categorization. R. A. Wilson, F. C. Keil, eds. MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. The MIT Press
90. Kay, P., W. Kempton. 1984. What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Amer. Anthropologist 86 65-79.
91. Keeley, L. H. 1996. War Before Civilization. Oxford University Press, New York.
92. Kenny, D. A. 1991. A general model of consensus and accuracy in interpersonal perception. Psych. Rev. 98 155-163.
93. Kenny, D. A., C. D. Mohr, M. J. Levesque. 2001. A social relations variance partitioning of dyadic behavior. Psych. Bull. 127 128-141.
94. Kerr, S. 1975. On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Acad. Management J. 18 769-783.
95. Khurana, R. 2007. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
96. Kitcher, P. 2003. Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
97. Knorr-Cetina, K. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
98. Krueger, J. I., J. F. Hasman, M. Acevedo, P. Villano. 2003. Perceptions of trait typicality in gender stereotypes: Examining the role of attribution and categorization processes. Personality Soc. Psych. Bull. 29 108-116.
99. Krueger, J. I., D. C. Funder. 2004. Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition. Behavioral Brain Sci. 27 313-327.
100. Kruglanski, A. W. 1989. The psychology of being "right": The problem of accuracy in social perception and cognition. Psych. Rev. 106 395-409.
101. Kuhn, T. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
102. Kukla, A. 1994. The structure of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies. Theory Psych. 4 5-33.
103. Laband, D. N., R. O. Beil. 1999. Are economists more selfish than other "social" scientists. Public Choice 100 85-101.
104. Latour, B. S. 1999. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
105. Latour, B., S. Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Sage, London.
106. Lazear, E., S. Rosen. 1981. Rank-order tournaments as optimum labor contracts. J. Political. Econom. 89 841-861.
107. Liberman, V., S. Samuels, L. Ross. 2004. The name of the game: Predictive power of reputation vs. situational labels in determining prisoner's dilemma game moves. Personality Soc. Psych. Bull. 30 1175-1185.
108. Lucas, R. E. 1977. Understanding business cycles. Studies in Business Cycle Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
109. MacKenzie, D. 2006. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
110. MacKenzie, D., Y. Millo. 2003. Constructing a market, performing theory. The historical sociology of a financial derivatives market. Amer. J. Sociol. 109 107-145.
111. Madon, S. J., L. Jussim, J. Eccles. 1997. In search of the powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. J. Personality Social Psych. 72 791-809.
112. Mahoney, J. 2006. Economic Foundations of Strategy. Sage, New York.
113. Malotki, E. 1983. Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Concepts in the Hopi Language. Mouton, Berlin.
114. March, J., H. Simon. 1958. Organizations. John Wiley, New York.
115. Markoczy, L., J. Goldberg. 1998. Management, organization and human nature: An introduction. Managerial Decision Econom. 19 387-409.
116. Martin, L. 1986. Eskimo words for snow: A case study in the genesis and decay of an anthropological example. Amer. Anthropologist 88 418-423.
117. McKenzie, C. R. M. 2003. Rational models as theories-Not standards-Of behavior. Trends Cogn. Sci. 7 403-406.
118. McKenzie, C. R. M. 2005. Judgment and decision making. K. Lamberts, R. L. Goldstone, eds. Handbook of Cognition. Sage, London, 321-338.
119. McKenzie, C. R. M., L. A. Mikkelsen. 2007. A Bayesian view of covariation assessment. Cognitive Psych. 54 33-61.
120. McKinley, W., M. A. Mone, G. Moon. 1999. Determinants and development of schools in organization theory. Acad. Management Rev. 24 634-648.
121. Mead, M. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. Blue Ribbon Books, New York.
122. Merton, R. K. 1948. The self-fulfilling prophecy. Antioch Rev. 8 193-210.
123. Meyer, J. W., B. Rowan. 1977. Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as Myth and Ceremony. Amer. J. Sociol. 83 340-363.
124. Miller, D. T. 1999. The norm of self-interest. Amer. Psych. 54 1053-1060.
125. Nagel, T. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problem in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. Harcourt, Brace and World, Indianapolis, IN.
126. Nickerson, J., T. Zenger. 2008. Envy, comparison costs, and the economic theory of the firm. Strategic Management J. 29 1429-1449.
127. Niiniluoto, I. 1984. Is Science Progressive? Springer-Verlag, Amsterdam.
128. Oaksford, M., N. Chater. 1996. Rational explanation of the selection task. Psych. Rev. 103 381-391.
129. Pfeffer, J. 1997. New Directions for Organization Theory: Problems and Prospects. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
130. Pfeffer, J. 2005. Why do bad management theories persist? A com- ment on Ghoshal. Acad. Management Learn. Ed. 4 96-100.
131. Pfeffer, J., N. Langton. 1993. The effect of wage dispersion on satisfaction, productivity and working collaboratively: Evidence from college and university faculty. Admin. Sci. Quart. 38 382-407.
132. Pinker, S. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Penguin Books, New York.
133. Pinker, S. 2007. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. Viking Adult, New York.
134. Popper, K. 1957. The Poverty of Historicism. Harper and Row, New York.
135. Popper, K. 1972. Objective Knowledge. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
136. Prendergast, C. 1999. The provision of incentives in firms. J. Econom. Lit. 37 7-63.
137. Psillos, S. 1999. Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. Routledge, New York.
138. Pullum, G. K. 1991. The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
139. Robertson, D. H. 1956. Economic Commentaries. Staples Press Limited, London.
140. Rosenthal, R., L. Jacobson. 1968. Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectations and Pupil's Intellectual Development. Holt, New York.
141. Sapir, E. 1911. Language and environment. Amer. Anthropologist 14 226-242.
142. Sapir, E. 1929. The status of linguistics as science. Language 5 207-214.
143. Schneider, B. 1987. The people make the place. Personnel Psych. 40 437-454.
144. Simon, H. A. 1954. Bandwagon and underdog effects in the possibility of election predictions. Public Opinion Quart. 18 245-253.
145. Simon, H. A. 1955. A behavioral model of rational choice. Quart J. Econom. 69 99-110.
146. Simon, H. A. 1985. Human nature in politics. Amer. Political Sci. Rev. 79 293-304.
147. Smith, A., L. Jussim, J. Eccles. 1999. Do self-fulfilling prophecies accumulate, dissipate, or remain stable over time? J. Personality Social Psych. 77 548-565.
148. Snyder, M., E. D. Tanke, E. Berscheid. 1977. Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. J. Personality Social Psych. 35 656-666.
149. Sobel, J. 2005. Interdependent preferences and reciprocity. J. Econom. Lit. 43 392-436.
150. Stanovich, K. E. 1999. Who Is Rational? Studies in Individual Differences in Reasoning. Laurence Erlbaum, New York.
151. Stanovich, K. E., R. F. West. 2000. Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate. Behavioral Brain Sci. 23 645-665.
152. Teece, D. 2003. Expert talent and the design of (professional services) firms. Indust. Corporate Change 12 895-916.
153. Thomas, W. I. 1923. The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Little, Brown, Boston.
154. Vaugirard, V. 2005. Beliefs, bailouts, and spread of bank panics. Bull. Econom. Res. 57 93-107.
155. Walster, E., E. Berscheid, G. W. Walser. 1973. New directions in equity research. J. Personality Social Psych. 25 151-176.
156. Werhane, P. 1989. The role of self-interest in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. J. Philos. 86 669-680.
157. Whorf, B. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality. Wiley, London.
158. Williamson, O. E. 1993. Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization. J. Law Econom. 36 453-486.
159. Williamson, O. E. 1996. Economic organization: A case for candor. Acad. Management Rev. 21 48-57.
160. Zenger, T. R. 1992. Why do employers only reward extreme performance? Examining the relationship among performance, pay, and turnover. Admin. Sci. Quart. 37 198-219.
161. Zenger, T. R. 1994. Explaining organizational diseconomies of scale in R&D: Agency problems and the allocation of engineering talent, ideas, and effort by firm size. Management Sci. 40 708-729.
162. Zenger, T. R., W. S. Hesterly. 1997. The dis aggregation of corporations: Selective intervention, high-powered incentives, and molecular units. Organ. Sci. 8 209-222.
163. Zenger, T. R., S. G. Lazzarini. 2004. Compensating for innovation: Do small firms offer high-powered incentives that lure talent and motivate effort Management Decision Econom. 25 329-345.
164. Zenger, T. R., C. R. Marshall. 2000. Determinants of incentive intensity in group-based rewards. Acad. Management J. 43 149-163.